Quotes About Privilege

What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.

I have always thought it a great privilege to have as my colleague in the Palit Chair of Chemistry such a distinguished pioneer in scientific research and education in Bengal as Sir Prafulla Ray. It has been invariably my experience that I could count on his cooperation and sympathy in every matter concerning my scientific work.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

I wondered if we were doing him a favor. The Galton household had hot and cold running money piped in from an inexhaustible reservoir. But money was never free. Like any other commodity, it had to be paid for.

When people with money thief and build big house with the money nobody can touch them; when poor people thief a pound of beef people throw their hands in the air and shout for he to go to prison.

In J. H. Plumb's words, in Georgian society, 'without protection, the poor and the weak and the sick went under; the rich and the strong prospered'.

And just as the functions of the bodily organs of plants and animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator of privileged classes and castes and of new monopolies.

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

I cannot pretend that I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return . . . Above all, I have been a sentient being on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

As they say in Washington, laws are for the little people.

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

Patriarchy has effectively used exclusion as a central tenet of its ideological claims to hegemony in all our societies, where one is looking at notions of identity, of rights and privilege, of access and inclusion into institutions and sites of power.

What is "male privilege," and why is it important to name the elephant in the living room? My friend Patricia Monaghan (of blessed memory) describes it this way: "For those who have male privilege, it's like a person wearing strong perfume. Rarely can the wearer smell it, but those around begin to leave the room.

The sensations he had were shared by many of the young, poor and beautiful: how unfair it was that they should be denied benefits which the old and ugly enjoyed.

Have you ever met a slave, Luke?" she asked. The question took me aback, coming from a black person. I stammered out a no. She said, "Really? You've never been to a mall? You've never watched shoppers with their carts piled with soda and microwaveable food? You've never stayed in a hotel where a fifty-year-old Mexican mother of six scrubs your shit stains off the toilet bowl? You've never watched TV for five hours straight?

Those who have too much, too often respect nothing.

As a novice in collecting,' he said with a modesty not unlike Bache's, 'I expected to have to pay the highest prices for masterpieces. What I did not expect, what I was to discover, was that I would also have to pay a large premium for the privilege of paying the highest prices!

You can't have capitalism without racism.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive-to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

He is so rich, he has no room to shit.

So the issue is not character flaws among the elites. The issue, rather, is a system in which some people sleep on beds made of ivory while others end up being sold for the price of a pair of sandals.

It is remarkable, I have since thought, how once a man has a few coins, no matter how he came by them, he thinks right away that he is entitled to them, and to whatever they can buy, and fancies himself cock of the walk.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege...

Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who is in love with either/or.