Quotes About Privilege

Edith Wharton

For four or five generations it had been the rule of both houses that a young fellow should go to Columbia or Harvard, read law, and then lapse into more or less cultivated inaction.

But his marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. If Undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral insouciance with Sheban elegance.

Rich and idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such situations;

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense, but your lungs are thinking about the air if you are not. And so it is with your rich people: they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!

Except for the two years he had lived with cowboys in North Dakota,and being the employer of a dozen or so servants,Roosevelt had never had to suffer any prolonged intimacy with the working class.From infancy,he had enjoyed the perquisites of money and social position.The money,through his own mismanagement,had often run short,and he was by no means wealthy even now, but he had always taken exclusivity for granted.

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.

eating dog food at the foot of the rich man's table.

Keller hesitated. "I suppose," he said pleasantly, "that any system that gives power to a particular class will tempt that class to exploit the powerless. It seems to be human nature.

A little Indian guy being sneered at by monsters of English privilege would normally have unleashed the full weight of Anne's loyalty to underdogs, but this time it was wiped out by Vijay's enormous desire to be a monster of English privilege himself.

Edward St. Aubyn

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on.

Nothing could better justify the colonizer's privileged position than industry, and nothing could better justify tge colonised 's destitution than his laziness. The mythical potrait of the colonized therefore includes an unbelievable laziness, and that of the colonizer suggests that employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his reasonable wages.

Bravo, ma per te sarà come un gioco, sarà come i ragazzini quando giocano a far gli indiani: farai l'indiano, ma i veri indiani siamo noialtri, veri operai e veri disoccupati; tu sarai sempre un indiano finto, ci avrai sempre papà con i suoi magazzini, di riserva, per tenerti su il morale, anche se, per puntiglio, ti lascerai morire di fame e il morale, nella disoccupazione, è tutto, bello mio.

But a person can be protected or kept safe by his class only up to a point.

I acknowledge the privilege of being alive in a human body at this moment, endowed with senses, memories, emotions, thoughts, and the space of mind in its wisdom aspect

Some people say learning is a privilege not a right. Yet we fight for a child's education rights somewhere in Africa

In my kingdom, on the other hand, a man becomes a great one, and a ruler, by being first the servant of those over whom he is to bear rule. In other states, they rule whose privilege it is to be ministered unto; in the divine commonwealth, they rule who account it a privilege to minister.

The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.

Often you told me that responsibility and authority are privileges, not the rights of every man for the taking.

Warren's guests had learnt about poverty, not from being poor themselves, in places where you did not hear the screams and yelling of help.

All our institutions, our traditional attitudes, our laws, our morals, our customs, give evidence of the fact that they are determined and maintained by privileged males for the glory of male domination. These institutions reach out into the very nurseries and have a great influence upon the child's soul.

There's nothing that irritates Americans more than the fact that some members of Congress think they are entitled to their own set of rules. And it's true - too many people in Washington live in an alternate reality.

Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has.