W. H. Auden Quotes

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

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

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

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.

I don't like class distinction, and there is far too much of that in England.

Class still matters in Britain today.

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

Ideas are fatal to caste.

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

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 think the presence of caste in India, how the villages are geographically structured on caste lines, is very different from China. The presence of an egalitarian culture is striking in a Chinese village.

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.

I don't like a class system. I don't like the idea of being in a different class than other people.

There is no caste in blood.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

We cannot put into the Constitution, owing to existing prejudices and existing institutions, an entire exclusion of all class distinctions.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

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

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

When brought together in society all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, titled or untitled, in or out of office.

There are no great lords who possess everything and a herd of people who have nothing