Archibald Alison Quotes

All shall equal be. The Earl, the Marquis, and the Dook, The Groom, the Butler, and the Cook, The Aristocrat who banks with Coutts, The Aristocrat who cleans the boots.

There is no distinction of persons among them, and deference is shown to merit rather than to noble blood.

Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman dares now shock his greengrocer.

In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum.

Commoners are not allowed to wear cotton clothing, under pain of death.

Only great noblemen and valiant warriors are given license to build a home with a second story; for disobeying this law the penalty is death.

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

Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

You have to accommodate the rich and the new rich under the same roof.

Character and class are character and class. Either you have it or you don't.

'High Cotton' is more conscious of class than 'Black Deutschland.'

American and French culture are really, really different, but in a way it's funny.

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolite.

[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.

Jews know the Palestinians. And they know they're not really different. And they know they are from the same background. And they know if they coordinated that they could be an economic success and a real basis for a rebirth in the Middle East.

Scratch a socialist and you find a snob.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

The habits of every animal are, at least in the eyes of man, constantly similar in all ages. But the habits, the clothes, the words and the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a bourgeois, a priest and a pauper, are wholly dissimilar and change at the will of civilizations.

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.

Objectively, class differences in accent, dress, manners, and general style of life are very much smaller; and one cannot, strolling about the street or travelling on a train, instantly identify a person's social background as one can in England. Subjectively, social relations are more natural and egalitarian, and less marked by deference, submissiveness, or snobbery, as one quickly discovers from the cab-driver, the barman, the air-hostess and the drug-store assistant.

I did find New Zealand similar to Ireland. The people, obviously. I found that, ironically, although these two countries were very far away from each other, their humor was so similar and their outlook on things was quite similar as well.

Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.

People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.