Wikiquote of the day
Daily quote by Elite
- It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.
- Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Prize Lecture (8 December 1987)
- The whole notion of the free market, laissez-faire capitalism, globalization is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite. And they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country. And people, especially economists, who deviate from that ideology have been pushed aside, and become pariahs. And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of the upper ruling class.
- Chris Hedges, interviewed by Paul Jay, “The Pathology of the Super-Rich” November 23, 2014 (12:07)
- People with advantages are loath 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, The Power Elite (1956), p. 14
- More and more, I tune out when I see the word "elites," regarding it as a lazy Marxist slur, from both Left and Right. I still use it, when I believe it is absolutely the right word. But more and more, it makes me say, "Bye."
- Jay Nordlinger, Twitter post (10 September 2018)
- I came to understand how organized governments used their concentrated power to retard progress by their ever-ready means of silencing the voice of discontent if raised in vigorous protest against the machinations of the scheming few, who always did, always will and always must rule in the councils of nations where majority rule is recognized as the only means of adjusting the affairs of people. I came to understand that such concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress.
- Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism, lecture printed without date of publication sometime in the 1890s
- The practice of democracy has the notorious tendency to become paradoxical. It begins in the name of the "demos" but goes on to construct the demos rather narrowly; oftentimes, sections of the population manage to ensconce themselves as "the people", they count as the public, their ideas masquerade as the people's ideas. This inevitably produces a layered citizenry.
- We should be alarmed when members of the ruling class start pleading with us to take sides with them against the 'elite': one section of the elite calling for us to oppose the elite.