#Class Quotes

“When rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what price they will”

“If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review,in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth.”

“The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.”

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

“When the representatives of "Big Business" think of the people, they do not include themselves.”

“That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.”

“Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.”

“Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society.”

“[There are dangers in] the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts.”

“The poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it.”

“I am a great believer in high-priced people. If a thing cost a lot it may not be any better, but it adds a certain amount of class that the cheap thing can never approach; in the long run it's the higher-priced things that are the cheapest.”

“It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.”

“Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

“Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein.”

“One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.”

“In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.”

“I will not descend among professors and capitalists.”

“It is from the middle class that writers spring, because, it is in the middle class only that the practice of writing is as natural and habitual as hoeing a field or building a house.”

“History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.”

“There are two distinct classes of men - those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes.”

“Aristocracy is kept up by family tyranny and injustice.”

“Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status.”

“All privileges based on wealth, and all emnity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American.”

“The English country-gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”

“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.”

“The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.”

“The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.”

“"Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information." "I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand." "Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that?" "I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person."”

“Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.”

“With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized”

“I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.”

“If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty”

“I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life.”

“In the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristocracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meeting, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one majestic level!”

“The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.”

“The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.”

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.”

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”

“We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.”

“How superbly brave is the Englishman in the presence of the awfulest forms of danger and death; and how abject in the presence of any and all forms of hereditary rank.”

“The lord is the peasant that was,The peasant is the lord that shall be.”

“The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.”

“I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.”

“Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”

“Trust him to have his bitter politicsAgainst his unacquaintances the richWho sleep in houses of their own, though mortgaged.Conservatives, they don't know what to save.”

“In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.”

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”

“The race of the guardians must be kept pure.”

“Those who live in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's attitude when he has power.”

“I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.”