Rome Quotes

Marriage shall not take place between a patrician and a plebeian.

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

The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs;

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Social distinctions concern themselves ultimately with whom you may and may not marry.

English people are so trapped in this class paradigm.

His lordship may compel us to be equal upstairs, but there will never be equality in the servants hall.

The tradesmen are the only gentry in England.

The division of society into estates or castes means in effect that conceptually and organizationally these ‘natural’ forms are established without their economic basis ever becoming conscious

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

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

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

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

They cannot divide us by saying that you're middle class or you're lower class.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

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.

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

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.

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

You may be the most liberal, Liberal Englishman, and yet you cannot fail to see the categorical difference between the responsible and the irresponsible classes.

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.

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.

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

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