Quotes & Sayings About The Ruling Elite

Privatisation is presented as being the only alternative to an inefficient, corrupt state. In fact, it is not a choice at all ... it is a mutually profitable business contract between the private company (preferably foreign) and the ruling elite of the Third World — Arundhati Roy

The ultimate goal of the political elite is to privatize the air. So as not to destroy their own edifice of democratic compassion they will make provisions for the sick and the poor. Air will be rationed by a privatized bureaucracy and only those who complete a series of stringent means tests will be allowed to breath freely. If this sounds like untenable dystopian sci-fi, you haven't been paying attention. In the 17th century Dean Jonathon Swift satirically proposed that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. Many Lords in Westminster at the time took this as a sign that an Irish voice was finally speaking sense. The descendants of these Lords still stalk the corridors of power today. Never underestimate the callousness or the hereditary madness of the ruling class. — Dean Cavanagh

According to royal doctrine, the king's role as defender of Egypt (and the whole of creation) involved the corresponding defeat of Egypt's neighbors (who stood for chaos). To instill and foster a sense of national identity, it suited the ruling elite - as leaders have discovered throughout history - to cast all foreigners as the enemy. An ivory label from the tomb of Narmer shows a Palestinian dignitary stooping in homage before the Egyptian king. At the same time, in the real world, Egypt and Palestine were busy engaging in trade. The xenophobic ideology masked the practical reality. — Toby A.H. Wilkinson

The program of the ruling elite in Orwell's 1984 was: "A foot stamping on a human face forever!" This is naive and optimistic. No species could survive for even a generation under such program. This is not a program of eternal, or even long-range dominance. It is clearly an extermination program. — William S. Burroughs

The ruling British elite are like animals
not only in their morality, but in their outlook on knowledge. They are clever animals, who are masters of the wicked nature of their own species, and recognize ferally the distinctions of the hated human species. Nonetheless, obsessively dedicated to being such animals, they can not [sic] assimilate those qualities unique to true human beings. — Lyndon LaRouche

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies. — N. T. Wright

One of the errors of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the belief that regime change must be creative. The theory was that the destruction of a state and its ruling elite would bring freedom and justice. — Timothy Snyder

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

Despite its enormous power and wealth, China's ruling elite remains absolutely petrified that the free flow of information will undermine its political legitimacy, particularly among China's younger generation. — Tom Lantos

For the history of left-hand-path ideas, the all-important figure of Odin underwent a radical, yet predictable, splitting of image. He was - like all the other gods - portrayed as the epitome of evil. In parts of Germany, the speaking of his name was forbidden. It is for this reason that the modern German name for the day of the week usually called after him was renamed Mittwoch, "Mid-Week," while Thor (German Donar) keeps his weekday name, Donnerstag. The original name survives in some German dialects as Wodenestag or Godensdach.28 However, even after Christian conversion he still retained his patronage over the ruling elite. All the Anglo-Saxon kings continued to claim descent from Woden,29 and in the English language he retains his weekday name, Wednesday (Woden's day). — Stephen E. Flowers

Then again, given that human history appears to be defined by a succession of more or less corrupt ruling elites, and if we are to assume that such corruption (and its spread throughout society) is the mechanism by which a civilization attracts cosmic catastrophe, blaming and deposing the elite is a good solution. The problem, however, is that the underlying mechanism is not understood by the people, which means that they lack the knowledge that, if they are to prevent further destruction, they must, at all costs, prevent the establishment of any future corrupt elite. — Laura Knight-Jadczyk

It is probably safe to say that in strongly hierarchical societies the only people to whom something approaching nationalist sentiments can be attributed in pre-modern times is the ruling elite, and then only at times. — Patricia Crone

When the political partisan's beliefs are insulted or ridiculed, he feels the 'offence' as deeply as any believer who has heard his god or prophet questioned. We do not, however, prohibit or restrict arguments about politics out of 'respect' for political ideologies, because we are a free society. We call societies that prohibit political arguments 'dictatorships', and know without needing to be told that the prohibiting is done to protect the ruling elite. — Nick Cohen

The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions. — Robert Payne

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

The variances between the Gilgamesh and Moses stories are explained by the era and location, reflecting also the values of the people, as well as the agendas of the wealthy elite and ruling class of the time. These differences are germane in establishing the various influences, mores and other important aspects of a particular culture. As we can see, however, there are many details in common that indicate a shared archetype, some of which we will examine further. — D.M. Murdock

The Jeffersonians "hated and feared" the Jacobin concept of a "general will," wrote Felix Morley in Freedom and Federalism.29 For if "the general will" were to become a practical reality regarding the operation of government, then all voluntary associations must be subjected to government regulation and control in the name of "the people" and their "will" - as interpreted by a ruling elite. This would be the road to serfdom and the end of individual liberty. — Thomas J. DiLorenzo

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don't have a voice in today's political landscape and are too often ignored by today's ruling elite. — Paul Dacre

If life is not a continuum, from conception to natural death, then all of us are potential victims if we fall out of favor with a ruling elite. — Cal Thomas

There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Book I wrote this book because I believe there is still hope to prevent the catastrophic events planned by the global elite ruling class. In a desperate attempt to protect their monopoly on the global financial system, they are willing to start World War III. It is their intention to use ISIS to ignite a massive conflict in the Middle East, a conflict designed to draw Russia and China in so they can start a global war. — James Garcia

The modern university is the institution through which the next generation's elite is formed. It inculcates the two essential, nonnegotiable principles of the American ruling class: consumerism and relativism. — Jonathan V. Last

A lot of people don't know what democracy and power really is. The real power is held by whichever social class has ownership and control of the means of production, economy and state apparatus. In capitalist society, the big business class has this power. Democracy is the will of the majority of the ruling class being put into law and action. So in a capitalist democracy, the big business class has the power through their control of the means of production, economy and state apparatus. People voting in elections is not the real power at all.
Until the workers in society democratically control the means of production, economy and state apparatus, which will enable society to be run in the interests of the wants and needs of the mass population, then big business will continue ruling in the interests of corporate profit, which means the super-rich elite exploiting all of us. — Charles Eisenstein

Whether white, black, Asian, or Latino, American students rarely arrive at college as habitual readers, which means that few of them have more than a nominal connection to the past. It is absurd to speak, as does the academic left, of classic Western texts dominating and silencing everyone but a ruling elite or white males. The vast majority of white students do not know the intellectual tradition that is allegedly theirs any better than black or brown ones do. They have not read its books, and when they do read them, they may respond well, but they will not respond in the way that the academic left supposes. For there is only one 'hegemonic discourse' in the lives of American undergraduates, and that is the mass media. Most high schools can't begin to compete against a torrent of imagery and sound that makes every moment but the present seem quaint, bloodless, or dead. — David Denby

Many of the Kuomintang elite in Taiwan have relatives among the ruling elite here on mainland China. — Rebecca MacKinnon

In Parton's telling, the Village is "a permanent D.C. ruling class who has managed to convince themselves that they are simple, puritanical, bourgeois burghers and farmers, even though they are actually celebrity millionaires influencing the most powerful government on earth."17 It's not just the activist base of the left and the right who have recognized the widespread elite failure; more and more individual elites have broken ranks to acknowledge their own responsibility. — Christopher L. Hayes

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage ... Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The hope of Internet anarchists was that repressive governments would have only two options: accept the Internet with its limitless possibilities of spreading information, or restrict Internet access to the ruling elite and turn your back on the 21st century, as North Korea has done. — Peter Singer