Henry David Thoreau Quotes

For the Anglo-Saxons, food determined a person's position in society.

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.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

Americans sometimes say to me that they have no class system themselves. All human beings have class systems. It can be based on a different thing in a different country, but the thing about breeding is, you can't buy it. You can't buy class.

There are only two classes - first class and no class.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

A once-born man (a Sudra), who insults a twice-born man with gross invective, shall have his tongue cut out; for he is of low origin. If he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas their duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and into his ears

The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate, / God made them high or lowly. / And ordered their estate.

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.

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.

In India, cast not class … is what counts most in popular life.

Caste in India is the first and last reality.

The idea of the nation [India] itself is incompatible with the institution of caste.

One notable feature is that English doesn't have much of a system for expressing relative social status.

In the local state school I attended in England, I saw and heard far more awareness of where a person stood in the social hierarchy than I had ever heard stateside.

There's this idea of America that some people have to win and some have to lose, so certain things are in place to make this happen. Some people have to be the next legislators and political elites, and some have to fill the prisons and work in McDonald's. That's how America works. It's a machine which needs people up top and people down low.

I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

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.

I was a houseman, the lowest. I was just above - in the hierarchy of jobs, I was just above the Puerto Rican dishwashers - just above, so I felt superior to them.

I cannot become a Chowkidar because I am Brahmin. Brahmins can't be Chowkidars. It's a fact.

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

We can't deny the existence of caste in India. We have to live with it.

The conservative is the one who understands his own society from within and loves and defends it.

I've been with all walks of life... All people from all status.