Miriam Margolyes Quotes

Class still matters in Britain today.

And if we don't have a test, what we may end up doing is going back to what this country has done before. We could use social class and we still do, but in the 50s, it was, do you have the right last name and are your parents in privileged positions?

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

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

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.

I can assure you that the class system is alive and well and living in people's minds in England.

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

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

Class is real. It can't be faked.

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.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

I don't like a class system. I don't like the idea of being in a different class than other people.

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

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.

I never knew the lower classes had such white skins.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

I'm not interested in classes ... Far be it from me to foster inferiority complexes among the workers by trying to make them think they belong to some special class.

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

Both Conservative and Labour politicians in Britain are rather too fond of praising the relative 'classlessness' of American society and of urging their own people to emulate it. There is a certain falseness about such arguments, and also a certain hypocrisy.

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

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.

Class and the snobbery it provokes still matter far too much in Britain, but we are a far more mobile society than we used to be.