Elites Quotes - Page 4

• A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US. We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn't think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.

  Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

  Thinking, Long, Majority

  "Brazil rejects Bush move on climate change talks". Interview with John Vidal and Julian Borger, www.theguardian.com. June 4, 2007.

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• 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

  Fall, Class, People

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.563, Pan Macmillan

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• I say us - obviously I don't vote as I believe democracy is a pointless spectacle where we choose between two indistinguishable political parties, neither of whom represent the people but the interest of powerful business elites that run the world.

  Russell Brand

  Running, Powerful, Party

  "Russell Brand: Democracy is pointless" by Caitlin Mcdevitt, www.politico.com. June 04, 2012.

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• Our enthusiasm for digital technology about which we have little understanding and over which we have little control leads us not toward greater agency, but toward less...We have surrendered the unfolding of a new technological age to a small elite who have seized the capability on offer. But while Renaissance kings maintained their monopoly over the printing press by force, today's elite is depending on little more than our own disinterest.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Kings, Technology, Agency

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• A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Communication, Mean, Power

  "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" by Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea, (p. 595), 2012.

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• The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.

  Rudolph Rummel

  War, Government, Desire

  "Death by Government". Book by Rudolph Rummel, pp. 1-2, 1994.

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• Every athlete has doubts. Elite runners in particular are insecure people. You need someone to affirm that what you are doing is right.

  Lynn Jennings

  Running, Athlete, Insecure

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• I think the very concept of an elite commission deciding for the American people who deserves to be heard is profoundly wrong.

  Newt Gingrich

  Thinking, People, Democracy

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• The climate crisis requires a bottom-up, grassroots demand for solutions because the elites in many parts of the world are under the influence of old industry.

  Al Gore

  Climate, World, Demand

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• Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance. . . . There will always be the false snobbery which tries to place one vocation above another. You will become a member of the aristocracy in the American sense only if your accomplishments and integrity earn this appellation.

  James Bryant Conant

  Honesty, Integrity, Accomplishment

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• You're not the first Elite Ops agent to fall in love and you won't be the last," Ian informed him (Nik). "I've watched four of you fall so far, and I'll be here to watch your commander go down fighting as well. Protecting your woman isn't your problem; it's protecting your heart.

  Lora Leigh

  Falling In Love, Heart, Fighting

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• Adrian might be brash and impertinent, but he knew how to move. Maybe dance lessons had been part of growing up in an elite tier of Moroi society. Or maybe he was just naturally skilled at using his body. That kiss has certainly show a fair amount of talent.

  Richelle Mead

  Growing Up, Moving, Kissing

  Richelle Mead (2013). “The Indigo Spell: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.33, Penguin

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• In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Running, Freedom, Ideas

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• Western elites - the beneficiaries of 60 years of peace and prosperity achieved by the sacrifices to defeat fascism and Communism - are unhappy in their late middle age, and show little gratitude for, or any idea about, what gave them such latitude. If they cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Gratitude, Sacrifice, Years

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• Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Peace, History, Tradition

  Mary Catherine Bateson (2001). “Composing a Life”, p.71, Grove Press

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• Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression.

  Lincoln Kirstein

  Dance, Determination, Artist

  Lincoln Kirstein (1970). “Four Centuries of Ballet: Fifty Masterworks”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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• The web attacks traditional ways of doing things and elites, and this is very uncomfortable for traditional businesses to deal with.

  Martin Sorrell

  Business, Way, Social Media

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• If humanity has any hope of effecting real change for the better, it will not come from the Madison Avenue false reality makers who've cast Barack Obama as the savior of the world. To alter our course from tyranny to liberty, to defeat the corrupt elite, we must get past the puppets and confront the real power structure of the planet.

  Alex Jones

  Change, Leadership, Real

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• This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.

  George W. Bush

  People, Political, Arrogance

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• I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Running, Mean, Two

  "Final Edition". Book by Wallace Shawn, 2011.

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• Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Science, Discovery, Opposites

  Farewell Address, delivered 17 January 1961

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• Skilled shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. [Visa quotas] have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process we have created [a] privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at non-competitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of the income inequality.

  Alan Greenspan

  America, Labor Force, Competition

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• Man is the being, among whom only a small minority of the elite ones, find the Greatness of Glorious God, from the study of things and therefrom acquire perfect faith. But the same tool has become the means of deviation for the rest of them.

  Muhammad Atta-ullah Faizani

  Mean, Greatness, Men

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• The self-anointed media elite among us believe, somewhat self-servingly, that not only the act, or process of making a profit is positively sinister, but also that the very desire to do so is.

  Lachlan Murdoch

  Business, Believe, Self

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• I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War. This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite used the First World War to secure the Balfour Declaration and the principle of the Jewish State of Israel.

  David Icke

  Business, War, Believe

  "And the Truth Shall Set You Free". Book by David Icke, 1995.

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