Mencius Quotes

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

In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

I intended to be one of the governing class.

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.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

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.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

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.

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

The middle class is always a firm champion of equality when it concerns a class above it; but it is its inveterate foe when it concerns elevating a class below it.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.

Keep up the middle class; lop off aristocracy on the one hand, and a rabble at the other; let the middle class ... have the power.

No country can exist without a ruling class. The governing class in a America is a rank that is for sale.

All great revolutions are led by aristocrats.

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.

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.

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