George Bernard Shaw Quotes

In England the more horses a nobleman has, the more popular he is. So long as the English are devoted to racing, Socialism has no chance with you.

The British have turned their sense of humour into a national virtue. It is odd, because through much of history, humour has been considered cheap, and laughter something for the lower orders. But British aristocrats didn't care a damn about what people thought of them, so they made humour acceptable.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

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

The tradesmen are the only gentry in England.

Our ideas of the life and business of a soldier were drawn chiefly from the adventures of Ivanhoe and Charles O'Malley, two worthies with whose personal history almost every man in the army was familiar. The men who volunteered went to war of their own accord, and were wholly unaccustomed to acting on any other than their own motion…. Their officers were of themselves, chosen by election, and subject, by custom, to enforced resignation upon petition of the men…. There was one sort of rank, however, which was both maintained and respected from the first, namely, that of social life. The line of demarkation between gentry and common people … rests … upon an indeterminate something or other, known as family. To come of a good family is a patent of nobility, and there is no other way whatever by which any man or any woman can find a passage into the charmed circle.

Chivalry only worked with men of the same class.

I think poshness is very funny! But I think it's also delightful. There's something wonderful and very innocent about it, particularly with the Edwardians.

Abstraction and luxury are the guard dogs of the upper class.

I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist, unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

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

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

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

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

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

I was no Marie Antoinette. I was not born to nobility, but I had a human right to nobility.

'Downton Abbey' about upper-class posh people: of course it is.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

Of course the lower classes have always felt downtrodden and aspired to a better life. But there is this theory that people respond to a class structure in England - there was a time when people knew who they were and knew whom they served and as long as management wasn't abusive, it was a good life for people.

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.

I was not to the manor born.

It's the weird thing Eton does - you're at school next to lords and earls and, in my case, Prince William, so you end up being used to dealing with those sorts of people.