Alice Duer Miller Quotes

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

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

In a superior civilization, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste... would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.

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

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

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of the half of society over which the other half has power—from the exercises of the right of the strongest.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

I'm not interested in classes ... Far be it from me to foster inferiority complexes among the workers by trying to make them think they belong to some special class.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a) he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't ; b) he has a high IQ, but they don't.

Brahmins cannot hope to claim a high and superior status forever. Times are changing. They have to come down.

Tory society is a closed society, in which birth and wealth have priority.

The fight is over two fundamentally different ideas about the nature of America. On one side are those who believe that that every hardworking person should be able to rise. On the other are those who believe that wealthy white men should always rule over a permanent class of workers.

When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before.

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

Meritocracy is a system of segregation.

I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.

Everyone is born equally capable but lacks equal opportunity.