Brian Cox Quotes

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.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

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.

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.

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.

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

Class still matters in Britain today.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

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.'

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

It is not difficult to govern. All one has to do is not to offend the noble families.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

In this country there is no rank but rank mutton.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

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.

If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness.

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

We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.

In England, the class system is about a thousand years old, and it's not going to change any time soon.

I have so much respect for the Queen and for Charles, and what the family represents. And yet there's still a conflict about whether we can abolish the class system while also having a Royal family.

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

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.