Quotes About Privilege

An illiterate person who dies, let us say at my age, has lived one life, whereas I have lived the lives of Napoleon, Caesar, d'Artagnan. So I always encourage young people to read books, because it's an ideal way to develop a great memory and a ravenous multiple personality. And then at the end of your life you have lived countless lives, which is a fabulous privilege.

A coloro che sono privi di una qualunque identità sociale, l'Ur-Fascismo dice che il loro unico privilegio è il più comune di tutti, quello di essere nati nello stesso paese.

A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life.

It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.

What, then, was the difference between America and Moscow? The "muckraker" said it was a question of who owned the state. In America the people were supposed to own it, but most of the time the big businessmen bought it away from them. "It is privilege which corrupts politics," was his phrase.

What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich?

couldn't say anything comforting, for he knew that civil wars are not polite; he knew, what these privileged people had never troubled to learn, the age-old wrongs which had set the fires of hatred to blazing in the hearts of wage-slaves.

The excessively rich were as shy as wild birds; everybody was hunting them and they took wing at the least hint of danger. They were abnormally sensitive and had to be handled as if they were made of wet tissue paper. They would absorb flattery like sponges—but only that subtle kind which assured them that they were above flattery.

Of course it was wrong that some should be born to privilege while others did not have enough to eat. Of course it was right that the disinherited should protest and try to change the ancient evils of the world. Who would not demand food when he was starving? Who would not fight for liberty when he was oppressed? Who could fail to hate cruelty and injustice, and cry out for it to be ended?

They thought about their class and their class privileges, their property and their property system, and they thought about little else in the world. Their system was threatened in every country, and they were frightened, and hated what they feared. Class had become more than country, and the enemy at home more to be dreaded than anyone abroad.

Cannes was thought of as a playground for the rich; a city of lovely villas and gardens, a paradise of fashionable elegance. Few stopped to realize what a mass of labor was required to maintain that cleanliness and charm: not merely the servants who dwelt on the estates, but porters and truckdrivers, scrubwomen and chambermaids, kitchen-workers, food-handlers; and scores of obscure occupations which the rich never heard about. These people were housed in slum warrens

He had managed to get the good things in life, somehow—but why at least could he not go off and enjoy them, without coming to taunt the poor with their misfortune?

One might look at a Rembrandt picture, or hear a Beethoven symphony, without depriving others of the privilege; but one couldn't become an oil king without taking oil away from others.

Rich people never forget they are rich...

I had seen how deep in nearly every West Indian, high and low, were the prejudices of race; how often these prejudices were rooted in self-contempt; and how much important action they prompted. Everyone spoke of nation and nationalism but no one was willing to surrender the priviledges or even the separateness of his group.

We take the staples of modern life so much for granted until we're deprived of them. People do live quite well without what we consider to be basics, but they manage because they've never been de-skilled by their presence. To lose them when you've lived all your life with power at the touch of a switch and water at the turn of a tap is shocking, then unsettling, then grindingly depressing.

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.

I am he who cometh out of the depths. My lords, you are great and rich. There lies your danger. You profit by the night; but beware! The dawn is all-powerful. You cannot prevail over it. It is coming. Nay! it is come. Within it is the day-spring of irresistible light. And who shall hinder that sling from hurling the sun into the sky. The sun I speak of is Right. You are Privilege. Tremble!

At that time, for the thought written in stone, there existed a privilege perfectly comparable to our present liberty of the press. It was the liberty of architecture.

She pouted prettily, and he wondered if that was one of the things they taught wealthy young girls at schools like Miss Porter's. If not, it had been passed down from one generation to another as carefully as the secret of fire.

It's one of the perks of my life.

I know that now, in the world today, young people take freedom for granted. All the things you have, all of the freedoms you enjoy, they are things you were born with.

He tells me I'm "the ultimate poster child for my generation—you have everything you could possibly want, sky's the limit, then you decide you've got to burn down the joint, you do all this lunatic shit, then you suddenly change your mind and decide, 'Nah, America's not so bad after all—waiter, I'll have another chardonnay,' tuck in to this sweet life, and get away with it all scot-fucking-free.