Ian Schrager Quotes

The great families have their privileges.

In India, if you are from the elite, dogs are extremely important. The breed of the dog indicates your wealth, that you are westernized. The cook, another human being, is on a much lower level than your dog. You see this all the time.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

Language does not make one an elite.

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Tell it to Sweeney—The Stuyvesants don’t care—much.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

… an army of Gatsbys wanting not to overturn the social order but only to belong to the upper crust.

Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don't speak English.

The rich do not want people who come from poor families to rise to the highest position in the country.

... I'm much closer to the people at the bottom than the people at the top, and the latter won't forgive me for it.

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

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.

Class still matters in Britain today.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.

I try to not be or associate with elitists.

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.

I am an aristocrat. I love liberty; I hate equality.

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.

I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.

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

All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery.