Elite Quotes - page 13
I joined the Conservatives at Oxford. I didn't consider it a particularly important decision at the time. I was a young Indian boy at a university many in my country would have dreamed to go to, but very few would have fitted into. I became a Conservative, therefore to gain entry into this new elite world. I felt justified in my decision slightly later on when Harold Macmillian gave his Winds of Change speech in South Africa, a speech I thought was very brave. Later on the the 1980s I gave up my membership because of disagreements with the parties views, and I remain a Liberal Democrat voter to this day. Though, I don't see them as very much better.
Munir Butt
A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them. The possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us.
Jacques Barzun
The third reason is that at the time that Turkic Muslims were waging rebellion in the early years of the Guangxu reign, the ‘five elite divisions' that governor general Liu Jintang led out of the Pass were all Dungan troops [Hui dui 回队]. Back then, Dungan military commanders such as Cui Wei and Hua Dacai were surrendered troops who had been redeployed. These are undoubtedly cases of pawns who went on to achieve great merit. When Cen Shuying was in charge of military affairs in Yunnan, the Muslim troops and generals that he used included many rebels, and it was because of them that the Muslim rebellion in Yunnan was pacified. These are examples to show that Muslim troops can be used effectively even while Muslim uprisings are still in progress. What is more, since the establishment of the Republic, Dungan have demonstrated not the slightest hint of errant behaviour to suggest that they may prove to be unreliable.
Yang Zengxin
Here I must inject a personal note-I never shed blood upon the field of Sidwell Friends, nor did I fight the battles of Yale Law. I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself during my youth. Education was not a family legacy, and my kin belonged to the United Mine Workers of America, not to Skull and Bones. My forebears fought this country's wars from the bottom ranks, and I began my own military career as a private. I have felt the full arrogance of those to whom much was given, and personally, wish that I might come to bury the elite, not to praise them. Yet, those who would rise need examples to emulate. It grates on me to write it, but our military needs a return of the nation's elite to the officer corps, to the extent that a traditional elite, with its spotty but essential ideals of service, still exists.
Ralph Peters
If you go down a road that satisfies your personal predilections and relationships and sacrifices the common good of the country, including the elementary institution by which its civilization is sustained, then you're not only derelict in your public duty, you are abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, people throw around words like "crime against humanity", I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human being is the archetype of all crimes against humanity, and I think we have an entire elite faction that is now committed to committing such a crime against the American people.
Alan Keyes
Are we doing the right thing when we provide aid to a country, but the country is still ruled by a small elite and maybe it's not getting down to the people? Are we doing the right thing when we engage in training a military to become more professional, but maybe the military is still engaging in repressive activity? If we're not open to those criticisms, then we won't get better, we won't improve.
Barack Obama
The tragic destruction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen reaches into the very roots of humanity and touches not only every human being alive today, but the generations yet to be born. The Gana and Gwi call themselves 'first people of the Kalahari', they might as well say, 'first people of the world'. They have been here longer than any of us. They are the last survivors of the world's first modern humans. It is not up to the Botswana government to wipe them out of history, with nothing more than an arbitrary and cruel presidential directive in favour of just more wealth for the country's elite – and of course the fantastically rich owners of De Beers. We will fight for the Bushmen's right to survive however long it takes. If they lose, then we will make certain that the crimes which brought their end are not expunged, but written large into history. Twenty-first century governments can no longer destroy indigenous tribes with impunity.
Stephen Corry
What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.
Ben Carson
Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.
Noam Chomsky
Francis Bacon, in his New Atlantis, could charge his elite scientists in Salomon's House with practicing self-censorship to avoid publicizing dangerous knowledge. Here is how the Father of Salomon's House describes their practice: "We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not: and take all a oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret: though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.” Bacon, the first prophet of the new relation between science and society and of the "conquest of nature for the relief of man's estate,” knew better than we that knowledge is dangerous, that publication is a public and politically relevant act, and that self-censorship on the part of scientists is necessary and desirable. The passage is also remarkable for its wonderful ambiguity regarding whether scientists or the State has ultimate authority over dangerous knowledge.
Leon Kass
In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls.
Howard Zinn
These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government-combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left.
Howard Zinn
Sverdlov Hall was already nearly full...The provincial elite were all there. And it was all the usual things: people kissing each other and shouting greetings across the rows of seats, chattering about the snow and the harvest prospects and generally feeling themselves to be masters of their fate. In all the cacophony I didn't hear the name of Andropov mentioned once, not anything said about his death. At twenty minutes to eleven the hall hushed. The waiting began. With each minute the tension rose and the atmosphere felt charged with electricity...The tension reached a climax. All eyes turned towards the door...Who would come through it first? At precisely eleven, Chernenko's head appeared in the doorway. He was followed by Tikhonov, Gromyko, Ustinov, Gorbachev and the rest. The delegates' reaction was silence.
Konstantin Chernenko
Our democracy, as Snowden I think has revealed, has become a fiction. The state, through elaborate forms of political theater, seeks to maintain this fiction to keep us passive. And if we wake up, the state will not shy away from draconian measures. The goal is complete subjugation, the iron rule of our corporations and our power elite.
Edward Snowden
Virtually everything known about Caligula comes from hostile sources that portray him as a bloodthirsty maniac. Even allowing for exaggeration, there is no doubt that he never hesitated to torment or kill the common people, the ruling elite, or even his own family. His destructive reign was ended by assassination.
Caligula
