Quotes About Upstarts

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution.

One piece of bad luck was rapid technical change, which was a weapon that oddball upstarts could use against the enormous gray corporations.

For tens if not hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture, human societies had very effective social norms and institutions for controlling bullies. Why would they suddenly (in a few thousand years) replace them with institutions that gave the upstarts legitimacy?

This is how upstarts succeed—by avoiding arrogance and cultivating modesty. But even more important, they need to demonstrate to the people that the hierarchical social order is preferable to the alternative. In the Roman case, it was the fatigue of persistent internal wars that led to the re-establishment of monarchy. Monarchies