Sunday, September 30, 2018 – The Elite
Elitism – It’s lonely at the top. But it’s comforting to look down upon everyone at the bottom. ~ Larry Kersten
The very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else? ~ Thomas Sowell
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets. ~ Russell Baker
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good. ~ George F. Will
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ~ H. L. Mencken
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~ Winston Churchill
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ~ Isaac Asimov
The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense its moving parts, its smaller chambers – its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks–are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power. ~ Howard Zinn
Chinks in America’s egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism. ~ Florence King
People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves ‘naturally’ elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves. ~ C. Wright Mills
Jefferson’s fear was that without such a system of public education, the country would end up being ruled by a privileged elite that would recycle itself through a network of private institutions that entrenched their advantages. ~ Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education
It’s easy for common people to say what they think about the government. No one listens to them. ~ Ljupka Cvetanova
With the people, for the people, by the people – I crack up when I hear it. I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, ’cause that’s what really happens. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer
For men are not equal: thus speaks justice. And what I want, they are not permitted to want! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. ~ Bernard Bailey
We would not listen to those who were wont to say the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the voice of the mob is near akin to madness. [Nec audiendi sunt qui solent dicere vox populi, vox dei; cum tumultus vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.] ~ Alcuin (Albinus), Epistle to Charlemagne
The public! Why, the public’s nothing better than a great baby. ~ Thomas Chalmers
For who can be secure of private right, if sovereign sway may be dissolved by might? Nor is the people’s judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few. ~ John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
The man in the street does not know a star in the sky. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things – war and hunger and date rape – liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it. You just have to be liberal. ~ P. J. O’Rourke
People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite. ~ Dan Quayle
Faith, that’s as well said as if I had said it myself. ~ Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation
If the business community and political elite want to go to war they find it easy to mobilize domestic consent. ~ Edward S. Herman
What we are headed for is a sort of social structure in which the highbrows are the elite, the middlebrows are the bourgeoisie and the lowbrows are hoi polloi. ~ J. Russell Lynes
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. ~ Oscar Wilde
Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf. ~ Pankaj Mishra
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. ~ Hannah Arendt
Just Above Sunset 