Julian Fellowes Quotes

I've been with all walks of life... All people from all status.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

In the local state school I attended in England, I saw and heard far more awareness of where a person stood in the social hierarchy than I had ever heard stateside.

Being exposed to the enlisted Army was an eye-opener. I thought everyone was like me, but the enlisted Army is a constituency of the dispossessed.

People often think of America as a classless society, but, of course, that isn't true. Within immigrant communities, there's an enormous distinction of class, depending on who your parents are, and that kind of thing comes out really quick in things like marriage and interpersonal relationships.

Class is a big issue here. And some people get picked on more than others. I think we probably do. I mean, it doesn't help that we wear waistcoats and tweed the whole time. But there is a reverse snobbishness in England towards that sort of stuff. And I think that's one of the reasons we really enjoy America, 'cos we're classless.

We still retain in Britain a deeper sense of class, a more obvious social stratification, and stronger class resentments, than any of the Scandinavian, Australasian, or North American countries.

It was hard for an American to understand the contented acceptance by English men and women of permanent places in the lowest social rank.

The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

I had been in a film, playing a young British aristocrat. My wife told me that she was invited to a dinner and she invited me to dinner and the hostess had seen me and said, 'You cannot bring him.' but I think that I've done enough to shatter the image.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply hobbies or minor influences. They are hugely important in the affirmation of differences between groups and social classes and in the reproduction of those differences.

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Whether you like the look or not, that tailcoat is a tough shell, a suit of armour. The posh boy is a hardy species.

By vulgarity I mean that vice of civilization which makes man ashamed of himself and his next of kin, and pretend to be somebody else.

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

I am not ashamed to say that I am the son of a washerwoman.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.