Quotes About Elite

Ministri, deputati, professori, artisti, finanzieri, industriali, quella che si suole chiamare classe dirigente. E che cosa dirigeva in concreto, effettivamente? Una ragnatela nel vuoto, la propria labile ragnatela. Anche se di fili d'oro.

But the proto-democracy he had envisaged would devolve into a succession of ruling dynasties. Class distinctions grew, and with them—as had happened before in both Judaism and Christianity—a rapidly rising all-male clerical elite. These men became the gatekeepers of faith, elaborating the principles of islam into the institution of Islam, often by projecting their own conservatism onto the Quran itself.

The scriptures of all three of the great monotheisms show that they began similarly as popular movements in protest against the privilege and arrogance of power, whether that of kings as in the Hebrew bible, or the Roman Empire as in the Gospels, or a tribal elite as in the Quran.

Had Napoleon succeeded in his conquest of Europe, and had he had time to consolidate his military-bureaucratic regime, the megamachine might have emerged, at least halfway toward its modern form, by the middle of the nineteenth century: indeed, even the bedraggled ideological aftermath of Napoleonism conjured up in the mind of young Ernest Renan a future not unlike that which we are now facing: dictatorship by a scientific elite.

James Goldsmith is important because he used the power of the markets to break up the cosy patrician elite that ran Britain and its industries in the 1950s and '60s. In the process, Goldsmith helped transfer power in this country away from politics and towards the markets and the financial sector.

Economics taught in most of the elite universities are practically useless in my context. My country is dominated by drug economy and a mafia. Textbook economics does not work in my context, and I have very few recommendations from anybody as to how to put together a legal economy.

After Rio, I joined the gymnastics team at the University of Utah. It was a hard transition, because I've always competed in elite gymnastics, where we throw big skills. In college, you don't get any points for difficulty, but once I got the hang of it, it was a piece of cake.

The radicalized populace in liberal havens like California and New York seek to impose their socialist utopian ideology on those law-abiding, everyday Americans who live in what elite, coastal liberals derisively refer to as 'flyover country.'

There's a lot of pressure, and it's a long battle, to coach at the elite level. My wife and I didn't take a vacation for 10 years.

If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for the elites of the American Century, Stanford is the farm system for Silicon Valley.

The decision to join Stripe and run 'Increment' was a pretty easy one for me: It was an opportunity to be impactful, to collect and share best practices from the most effective engineering teams in the world. 'Increment' is a step toward flattening the distance between the Silicon Valley elite and developers everywhere.

In contrast, once food can be stockpiled, a political elite can gain control of food produced by others, assert the right of taxation, escape the need to feed itself, and engage full-time in political activities.

In contrast, once food can be stockpiled, a political elite can gain control of food produced by others, assert the right of taxation, escape the need to feed itself, and engage full-time in political activities. Hence moderate-sized agricultural societies are often organized in chiefdoms, and kingdoms are confined to large agricultural societies. Those complex political units are much better able to mount a sustained war of conquest than is an egalitarian band of hunters.

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity, and every profession's jargon is meant to confuse and exclude those who aren't part of the guild.

Gut reaction against yobbery, the masses and solid Frenchness. But an equally visceral distaste for the elite, for castes, culture and the nomenklatura. Do we have to choose between the moronic masses and the arrogant privileged classes (particularly when they have an odour of demagogic humility about them)? No solution.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

In a country like India, the British were only able to rule the country because it had completely co-opted the elite of the country, who did their work for them.

Unlike the majority of the writers of his age, La Rochefoucauld was an aristocrat; and this fact gives a peculiar tone to his work.

There is no right to work in a think tank, and these are very privileged positions.

Just because I have to deal with the stress and pressure and nerves of elite sport every day, it doesn't mean it all comes easily. I have worked hard at the mental side of my game.

Unless you've been in the job as a head coach, and certainly at the Premier League level and elite level, it's stressful. You're responsible for everything. You're responsible for how the team plays, if they don't turn up you're responsible for that, your job is to get them playing.

Davos is an extravagant bun-fight of the vanities, where the 'haves' gather to strike deals with the 'have-mores.'

Rent-control laws disproportionately benefit the non-poor because the elite pull strings, work the system and are better connected than the non-poor.

I grew up in this weird, educationally elite but economically impoverished environment. Total 'Oprah' story.