Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The chasm between rich and poor is becoming larger, and I think it's interesting terrain to talk about and expose.

I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.

There is no better example of social and economic policy discussion as an idle pastime for the rich than the World Economic Forum at Davos. These guys make the millionaire schmoozers at the Aspen Ideas Festival look like short-order cooks.

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.

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.

Economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege

Champagne Socialist

Senators will associate only with men of their own class; and thus become strangers to the condition of the common people.

I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the travails of the middle class.

The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.

What I see happening to this country is a neo-caste system.

Working-class people don't tend to be wooed by celebrity.

Economic chasm between people is something that is of interest to me. And something that I used to write about even as a child. It's something I've revisited a few times in my writings.

If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country.

The rich stick together; the poor and the marginalised are thrown together.

Growing up on, say, the Upper East Side, you're so isolated. If you go to the Hamptons every weekend, you never talk to a construction worker, and the construction worker would never talk to you.

The benefit of rich families putting their child through Harvard is always going to exist. But it's quite evident that there are 700 million peasants in China who are never going to go to Harvard.

Class still matters in Britain today.

Aspiration, it seems, is in danger of becoming the preserve of the wealthy.

It's horrible how money and fame can make you acceptable while, if you're not famous or rich, you're not acceptable.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.