Christopher Hitchens Quotes

I am fairly classless because it is very difficult to class someone who comes from a mixed marriage.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

My upbringing was so middle-class and repressed. It wasn't until I was placed in Lunghua that I met anyone from any other social strata. When I did, I found them colossally vital.

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.

I'm not from the working class. I'm from the criminal class.

You're either ghetto or you're not.

In the States everyone aspires to be middle class. It's so engrained into the American psyche: As long as you work hard you're going to be rich some day. The history of Britain is that if you're born working class, you're going to stay there, although that is changing.

I'm reluctant to use the word class so much.

I never knew the lower classes had such white skins.

You can take the girl out of the estate, but you can't take the estate out of the girl.

My parents were decent, aspirant first-generation middle class. They read 'Reader's Digest', listened to classical music; my grandparents had a bust of Stalin on the mantelpiece. The kids of that generation were terrified of being below par, class-wise.

Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.

Football is generally a working-class sport, and because of the fact I went to private school and was brought up slightly differently, people think that makes me a different person.

My dad was working class.

'High Cotton' is more conscious of class than 'Black Deutschland.'

I reckoned my accent and class would count against me; I didn't see actresses as being working-class.

Working-class people don't tend to be wooed by celebrity.

I used to be obsessed with race. I'm more obsessed with class now.

There is the idea that there's a section of society, these working-class tradesmen, are driving around and they all think the same. Everybody who has tools in their vehicle have all the exact same thoughts: it's incredibly patronising isn't it?

I think the working-class part of me comes out. Sometimes the people who have the loudest mouths are upper-class, upper-middle-class. The quietest are often working-class people, people who are broke. There is a fear of losing whatever it is that you have. I come from that background.

I don't know that I ever bought into the "American dream." I was a child of privilege. I grew up in the '50s and it was a quiet time in America, at least on the surface and I grew up in a kind of feathery bed of privilege.

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

I identify with the bottom of the pyramid, because, outside of having money, I am at the bottom of the pyramid.

The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.