#elite

I don't believe that the American dream should be reserved for those who are born into the elite or somehow have been given an advantage over others. My growing-up experience is probably the most important thing that guides my priorities and my work today. ↗

— Ken Salazar

#american #american dream #been #believe #born

[...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#inventions #technology #transport #age

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#elite #elitism #elitist #voter #voting

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#politics #politics-language #totalitarianism #motivational

One of the key characteristics of an elite corps is its susceptibility to those more powerful than itself. Elite power is naturally attracted to a power hierarchy and fits itself neatly, obediently into the one that promises the most personal benefits. Here is the Achilles’ heel of armies, police and bureaucracies. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#bureaucracies #bureaucracy #elite #hierarchy #power

It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world. ↗

— James Connolly

#civilized #death #destruction #elite #humanity

When I entered the market, I was rejected because the elite say that you have to sell things at a certain price point. My position was that the consumer is smarter than that. Who cares if it's $200, not $2,000? ↗

— Max Azria

#cares #certain #consumer #elite #entered

Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda. ↗

— Hannah Arendt

#elite #itself #masses #mob #momentum

If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass. ↗

— John Perry Barlow

#bought #elite #highly #ideas #ignorant

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

— Larry Elder

#benefit #better #connected #disproportionately #elite