Gilbert Livingston Quotes

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

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

Growing up on, say, the Upper East Side, you're so isolated. If you go to the Hamptons every weekend, you never talk to a construction worker, and the construction worker would never talk to you.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.

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.

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.

Our elite has not evolved in 20 years, and the instincts of this elite are not democratic.

I've been around the ruling class all my life, and I've been quite aware of their total contempt for the people of the country

The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.

Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.

England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.

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.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

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

When people get rich, they cut themselves off from the context that has earned them these riches - the context of the common men. They forget they are part of society.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

I've never felt entirely comfortable in high society. I'm more comfortable talking to the bar staff than the super-rich. I don't really get what makes them tick.

Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of the most charming things about them.