Noel Coward Quotes

I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lakeshore Drive, it's hospitality.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

Meritocracy is a system of segregation.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

What am I responsible for? Who am I responsible to? Everybody? How come when Archie Bunker nailed everybody, it was funny - but when I do it, it's not?

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

I try to not be or associate with elitists.

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.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

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

I want nothing to do with privilege.

Nobody's got it made. Nobody, no matter what they look like.

We're not all equal, it's simply not true. That isn't science.

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.

He that despises his neighbor's happiness because he wears a worsted cap or a leather apron, he that struts immeasurably above the lower size of the people, and pretends to adjust the rights of the men by the distinctions of fortune

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking, "Do you want fries with that?

Do equall Law and right to all the King's Subjects rich and poor.

To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.