Germaine Greer Quotes

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

Class still matters in Britain today.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time.

Is class snobbery a social reality in the United States? Absolutely, and the kind that's codified by meritocracy is probably more toxic than the old-fashioned kind based on bloodlines.

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.

For most Americans nepotism is first and last a class issue—a way for the rich to warehouse their unemployable offspring while keeping the lower classes in their place. In fact however systematic nepotism has been practiced more or less continuously by both the upper and the lower classes without ambivalence or apology. It was the middle class that pushed the merit principle, rising as it did through the institutions of the market and the state.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

Each class of society has its own requirements; but it may be said that every class teaches the one immediately below it; and if the highest class be ignorant, uneducated, loving display, luxuriousness, and idle, the same spirit will prevail in humbler life.

Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, But leave us still our old nobility.

Senators will associate only with men of their own class; and thus become strangers to the condition of the common people.

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.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

Our elite has not evolved in 20 years, and the instincts of this elite are not democratic.

… an army of Gatsbys wanting not to overturn the social order but only to belong to the upper crust.

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.

We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.

I was born trash in a land where the people all believe themselves natural aristocrats.

Lord Salisbury constitutes himself the spokesman of a class, of the class to which he himself belongs, who'toil not neither do they spin'.

There is only one class of men, the privileged class

Having gone to a public school, I thought I knew about posh people. But I didn't know anything until I went to Oxford.

I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.