Quotes about elite
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Shiraz Minwalla photo

“The striking weakness of research in India is that research happens by and large only in a few elite institutions. But in the last five years, it has been broadening out a bit.”

Shiraz Minwalla (1972) Indian physicist

Interview in The Hindu (2013)
Context: String theory work done in India is pretty good. … There’s no other country with a GDP per capita comparable to India’s whose string theoretic output is anywhere as good. In fact, the output is better than any country in the European Union, but at the same time not comparable to the EU’s as a whole. So you get an idea of the scale: reasonably good, not fantastic.
The striking weakness of research in India is that research happens by and large only in a few elite institutions. But in the last five years, it has been broadening out a bit. TIFR and the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) have good research groups; there are some reasonably good young groups in Indian Institute of Science (IIS), Bengaluru; Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai; some small groups in the Chennai Mathematical Institute, IIT-Madras, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, all growing in strength, The Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, has also made good hires in string theory.

Noam Chomsky photo

“Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

interview by Charles M. Young in Rolling Stone, May 28, 1992 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19920528.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Context: If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“The hard core, the outlaw elite, were the Hell's Angels…”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1960s, Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1966)
Context: The hard core, the outlaw elite, were the Hell's Angels... wearing the winged death's-head on the back of their sleeveless jackets and packing their "mamas" behind them on big "chopped hogs." They rode with a fine unwashed arrogance, secure in their reputation as the rottenest motorcycle gang in the whole history of Christendom.

Vivek Agnihotri photo
Chris Hedges photo
Jeanine Áñez photo
Evo Morales photo

“Camacho also hails from a family of corporate elites who have long profited from Bolivia’s plentiful natural gas reserves… his family lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the nation’s resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ben-norton/ in Bolivia Coup Led by Christian Fascist Paramilitary Leader, a Multi-Millionaire – with Foreign Support https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/bolivia-coup-led-by-christian-fascist-paramilitary-leader-a-multi-millionaire-with-foreign-support/, Consortium News, (12 November 2019)
About

Nicolás Maduro photo
Michelle Alexander photo
Chris Hedges photo
Jack Vance photo

“Humanity many times has had sad experience of superpowerful police forces…As soon as (the police) slip out from under the firm thumb of a suspicious local tribune, they become arbitrary, merciless, a law unto themselves. They think no more of justice, but only of establishing themselves as a privileged and envied elite. They mistake the attitude of natural caution and uncertainty of the civilian population as admiration and respect, and presently they start to swagger back and forth, jingling their weapons in megalomaniac euphoria. People thereupon become not masters, but servants. Such a police force becomes merely an aggregate of uniformed criminals, the more baneful in that their position is unchallenged and sanctioned by law. The police mentality cannot regard a human being in terms other than as an item or object to be processed as expeditiously as possible. Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly overzealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption. The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.”

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 3 (pp. 32-33)

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“It was in many ways a political marriage between the most radical evangelical and the most controversial militarist, who together hope to conceive a new generation of ultra-right governments. Bolsonaro brings backing from a wealthy Catholic elite to Feliciano’s grassroots campaign network of evangelical churches.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

The Guardians editor Jonathan Watts. With Rousseff on the ropes, Brazil's far right sees an opening https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/05/brazil-far-right-dilma-rousseff-impeachment. The Guardian (5 May 2016).

Lloyd Kaufman photo
V. P. Singh photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo

“With all awards and accolades at the international level and his outstanding contribution to classical music, his appeal was not restricted to purists or the elite connoisseur. He endeared himself to the public at large by his tasteful rendering of light music and film songs.”

M. Balamuralikrishna (1930–2016) Carnatic vocalist, instrumentalist and playback singer

Jayalalithaa in: Balamuralikrishna deserves Bharat Ratna: Jayalalithaa http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/26/stories/2005072617030500.htm, Thee Hindu, 26 Jul y 2005.

Thiago Silva photo
Rukmini Devi Arundale photo
Mengistu Haile Mariam photo
Pierre Bourdieu photo
Naomi Klein photo

“Instead of rescuing the dirty industries of the last century, we should be boosting the clean ones that will lead us into safety in the coming century (Green New Deal). If there is one thing history teaches us, it's that moments of shock are profoundly volatile. We either lose a whole lot of ground, get fleeced by elites, and pay the price for decades, or we win progressive victories that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier. This is no time to lose our nerve.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Quoted in 'We Know This Script': Naomi Klein Warns of 'Coronavirus Capitalism' in New Video Detailing Battle Before Us https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/17/we-know-script-naomi-klein-warns-coronavirus-capitalism-new-video-detailing-battle, by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams, (17 March 2020)

Bernie Sanders photo

“If there is going to be class warfare in this country, it’s time that the working class of this country won that war and not just the corporate elite.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Senator Sanders was speaking to the Iowa AFL-CIO convention summer 2019

Quoted by Norman Solomon in The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/18/the-escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders/ (18 Feb 2020)
2020

“[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary (March 2018)

Alfred de Zayas photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“The main problem in the world is that power, and wealth is in the hands of a few elite.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Twitter 22 Aug 2018
2018

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“When power is in the hands of the elites it will lead to corruption and inequality.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Twitter https://twitter.com/Ahmadinejad1956 25 Aug 2018
2018

Eric Hoffer photo

“Governments can be democratic or not, more or less corrupt, but they will still pursue the same basic goals, and they will still be controlled by an elite. Government by its very nature concentrates power and excludes people from making decisions over their own lives.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Source: "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence, Chapter 4. The Color Revolutions

Paulo Lins photo

“The elite is ignorant of the favela because it doesn't want to see, and the favela doesn't know the rest of Brazil because it is deprived of the means and the opportunity.”

Paulo Lins (1958) Brazilian author

These are two different worlds that have no contact with each other…

On how his book City of God shed light on Brazil’s slums in “THE SATURDAY PROFILE; Out of the Slums of Rio, an Author Finds Fame” https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/26/world/the-saturday-profile-out-of-the-slums-of-rio-an-author-finds-fame.html in The New York Times (2003 Apr 26)

Arundhati Roy photo

“It is like what I said, that the elite of the world have all seceded into outer space, and they have a country up there, and they look down and say, “What is our water doing in their rivers, and what’s our timber doing in their forests?””

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

So there is a psychotic refusal to understand that the survival of the species is connected to the survival of the planet, you know? Because this sort of progress is a kind of church now. It is not amenable to reason. So it is very difficult to know how any real conversation can happen... <Br> A month or two ago, the Supreme Court of India...said that two million indigenous people should be evicted from their forest homes... Because that forest needs to be preserved as a sanctuary. But when, for the last 25 years, people were fighting against projects which were decimating millions of hectares and acres of forest, nobody cared... And when you are talking about evicting two million of the poorest people, stripping them of everything they ever had, there is little outrage. Any sense of talk of equality or justice seems to just have the same effect that blasphemy has in religious societies. That is what capitalism has become—a form of religion that will brook no questioning.

Democracy Now Arundhati Roy: Capitalism Is “a Form of Religion” Stopping Solutions to Climate Change & Inequality https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/13/arundhati_roy_capitalism_is_a_form, (13 May 2019)
Interviews

Lou Dobbs photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
John le Carré photo

“If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)

Prabowo Subianto photo

“We must not lose. If we lose, this country could go extinct. Because the Indonesian elites are always disappointing, always failing to carry out the mandate given by the Indonesian people. If the same system is continued, Indonesia will become weak. Indonesia will become even poorer, even more helpless and could even go extinct.”

Prabowo Subianto (1951) Indonesian general and politician

Indonesia could go 'extinct' if I lose election: Prabowo https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/12/18/indonesia-could-go-extinct-if-i-lose-election-prabowo.html The Jakarta Post (December 18, 2018)

“Human worlds are always awash in superstition, only a stubborn elite proof against it.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Margarets (2007), Chapter 34, “I Am M’urgi/On B’Yurngrad” (p. 306)

“Our world today is in the grip of anti-capitalism. State bureaucracies ruling over anti-market policies have grown into ideological and political elites who arrogantly presume to know and dictate how we should all live and work.”

Richard Ebeling (1950) American economist

“Is the ‘Spectre of Communism’ Still Haunting the World?” https://fee.org/resources/is-the-spectre-of-communism-still-haunting-the-world/, speech entitled “Evenings at FEE” in March 2006. Posted in Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), (December 19, 2008)

Andrew Neil photo

“We will puncture the pomposity of our elites in politics, business, media and academia and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is.”

Andrew Neil (1949) Scottish journalist and broadcaster

Andrew Neil: A welcome letter to GB News viewers https://www.gbnews.uk/shows/andrew-neil-a-welcome-letter-to-gb-news-viewers/105106.

Arundhati Roy photo
Isaac Asimov photo
Chris Hedges photo

“Socialism is submission of the masochistic masses to the will of the sadistic elites.”

Source: From a "Race of Masters" to a "Master Race": 1948 to 1848