Elitism

Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite—a select group of people with a certain ancestry, intrinsic quality or worth, higher intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes—are those whose influence or authority is greater than that of others; whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight; whose views or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities, or wisdom render them especially fit to govern. Alternatively, the term elitism may be used to describe a situation in which power is concentrated in the hands of a limited number of people.

Burmese nobles

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

• 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. In Absent Meaning: Fascination, Narrative, and Trauma in the Holocaust Imaginary, p. 50

B

Allan Bloom:...Elitism is the catch-all epithet expressing our disapproval of the proud and the desire to be first. But, unsupported and excoriated, this part of the soul lives on, dwelling underground, receiving no sublimating education. As with all repressed impulses, it has its daily effects on personality and also occasionally bursts forth in various disguises and monstrous shapes. Much of modem history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression.

• As soon as somebody or something stands out as excellent, the other shout goes up: 'Elitism!' And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. 'Standing out' is undemocratic.
  • Jacques Barzun, in America's Future, Volumes 32-35, p. 110

• Hobbes’s psychology treated what he called vainglory as a pathological condition based on ignorance of man’s vulnerability, on unjustified confidence. This condition can, according to him, be cured by liberal doses of fear. One need only hear what is said today … to recognize how much of modernity is devoted to unmanning this disposition. Elitism is the catch-all epithet expressing our disapproval of the proud and the desire to be first. But, unsupported and excoriated, this part of the soul lives on, dwelling underground, receiving no sublimating education. As with all repressed impulses, it has its daily effects on personality and also occasionally bursts forth in various disguises and monstrous shapes. Much of modem history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression.
  • Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind p. 330

• The Left Elite only pretend to be concerned about what's best for everyone else because it is the most effective way to manipulate you and your children into their abyss.
  • Tammy Bruce,in The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and, p. 195

C

Hugo Chavez:What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil.

• What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.
  • Benjamin Carson, in Carson at CPAC: How to destroy America in 4 steps

• Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
  • Dick Cavett, in Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets, p. 181

• We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world.
  • Hugo Chavez, in Utopia or Death (eBook), p. 81

• What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil.
  • Hugo Chavez, in An Interview with Hugo Chevas

• There are people in government who don't want other people to know what they know. It's just another example of elitism. And I spit on elitism. Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.
  • Tom Clancy, in Vonnegut and Clancy on Technology

• The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a [[*The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.
  • Tom Clancy, in Ten Pieces of Inspiration #146

• The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.
  • Tom Clancy, in Ten Pieces of Inspiration #146

• This is one of my pet peeves: Countries that will not tax their elite who expect us to come in and help them serve their people are just not going to get the kind of help from us that historically they may have.
  • Hillary Clinton, in Clinton warns Pakistan to make the rich pay

D

• If you believe, as I do, that on the whole ordinary people are more competent than anyone else to decide when and how much they shall intervene on decisions they feel are important to them, then you will surely opt for political equality and democracy. But if you believe that the ordinary person is less competent in this fundamental way than some particular person or minority, then I imagine that like Plato your vision of the best government is a government by this qualified person or elite.
  • Robert A. Dahl, After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), p. 26

E

• There's something strange about theater. My characters consistently demonize elitism, but of course it's taking place in a theater where only so many people can see it. I've been in silly popcorn movies - the kind of thing that as an actor you might feel embarrassed about - but those movies reach many more people.
  • Jesse Eisenberg, in Some Actors Work Both Sides of a Script

F

• Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.
  • Thomas Frank, in Revitalizing Electoral Geography. P.137

• The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.
  • Gerald R. Ford, in The Six Dimensions of Project Management: Turning Constraints into Resources, p. 236

G

Newt Gingrich: Part of why the Tea Party so deeply threatened the elite media is the tea party looked around and suddenly realized, there are more of us than there are of them.

• Part of why the Tea Party so deeply threatened the elite media is the tea party looked around and suddenly realized, there are more of us than there are of them.
  • Newt Gingrich, in Tea Party co-opted? ….Newt Gingrich For President Tea Party co-opted? ….Newt Gingrich For President

• I know very well that we are not all equal, nor can be so; but it is my opinion that he who deems it important to keep aloof from the so-called rabble, in order to maintain their respect, is as much to blame as a coward who hides himself from his enemy because he fears defeat.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (Boston: 1884), “May 15”

• Elitism is repulsive when based upon external and artificial limitations like race, gender, or social class. Repulsive and utterly false—for that spark of genius is randomly distributed across all cruel barriers of our social prejudice. We therefore must grant access—and encouragement—to everyone; and must be increasingly vigilant, and tirelessly attentive, in providing such opportunities to all children. We will have no justice until this kind of equality can be attained. But if only a small minority respond, and these are our best and brightest of all races, classes, and genders, shall we deny them the pinnacle of their soul's striving because all their colleagues prefer passivity and flashing lights? Let them lift their eyes to hills of books, and at least a few museums that display the full magic of nature's variety. What is wrong with this truly democratic form of elistim?
  • Stephen Jay Gould, "Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!" Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (1995)

• As you probably know, I'm often accused of intellectual exhibitionism and all forms of elitism. Although I can understand this point of view, it's a rather wasted argument because, if we regard areas of information as being elite and therefore somehow not usable, it means our center ground of activity becomes very, very impoverished.
  • Peter Greenaway, in Peter Greenaway: Interviews, p. 78

H

Hitler’s Fascism:The common elements of fascism, such as extreme nationalism, social Darwinism, the leadership principle, elitism, anti-liberalism, anti-egalitarianism, anti-democracy, intolerance, glorification of war, the supremacy of the state and anti-intellectualism, together form of a rather loose doctrine.

• Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or well educated.
  • Sam Harris, in Newsweek, Volume 152, Issues 9-17, p. 35

• And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic.
  • Geoffrey Hill, in The best writer alive, in verse or in prose”: Sir Geoffrey Hill turns 80 today

• The common elements of fascism, such as extreme nationalism, social Darwinism, the leadership principle, elitism, anti-liberalism, anti-egalitarianism, anti-democracy, intolerance, glorification of war, the supremacy of the state and anti-intellectualism, together form of a rather loose doctrine.
  • Hitler’s Fascism, in Political Ideology Today

J

• The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Ecopopulism … To change our laws and culture, the green movement justice, political solutions and social change.
  • Van Jones, in The Nation, Volume 287, p. 54

K

Florence King:Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

• Of course, there's a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that's part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.
  • Alex Kapranos, in Arch dukes Ferdinand

• This distinguished corruption will teach the distinguished person that he exists only for the distinguished, that he is to live only in the alliance of their circles, that he must not exist for other people, just as they must not exist for him.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), as translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (1995), p. 75

• The distinguished person ... may very well use an exaggerated courtesy toward the more lowly, but he must never associate with them as equals, since that would express that he was—human, but he is—distinguished.
  • Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847), as translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (1995), p. 75

• Chinks in America's EGALITARIAN armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
  • Florence King, Roget's Thesaurus of Words for Intellectuals: Synonyms, Antonyms, and ..., p. 153

• Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.
  • Florence King, in Quotes about Creativity, p. 8

M

Andre Rieu: Mozart composed his music not for the elite, but for everybody.

• This school used to be a bastion of rich, white elitism. And now... now they let homosexuals on the football team. Whining minorities run the student government. And you can't even coerce a woman into having sex with you without being brought up on charges.
  • Rand McPherson, PCU, Bit Bucket

• People with advantages ... come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.
  • C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956), p. 14

• Mozart composed his music not for the elite, but for everybody.
  • Andre Rieu, in Reflections of a Housekeeper, p. 105

O

• Everyone should have the same opportunity, and in many areas that's not the case because programs are built around the elite.
  • Bobby Orr, in Development

P

Camille Paglia:Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?

Steven Pinker:By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience...

Iggy Pop:...it's a term Punk Rock that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll.

• Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
  • Camille Paglia, in Camille Paglia quotes

• Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.
  • Camille Paglia, in Camille Paglia quotes

• I'm worried about the future of America insofar as our academically most promising students are being funneled through the cookie-cutter Ivy League and other elite schools and emerging with this callow anti-American, anti-military cast to their thinking.
  • Camille Paglia, in Salon Interview: Camille Paglia

• There's a very small group of elite actresses who are my age, who people want to work with. It's not easy to get a good job with good actors.
  • Amanda Peet, in MoviEs:Amanda Peet in repllky to the question:Do you get a good range of scripts, or are good female roles thin on the ground?

• By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture, melody in music, meter and rhyme in poetry, plot and narrative and character in fiction, the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience. They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite.
  • Steven Pinker, in Your Cake Before It’s Made Philosophical Reflections on Steven Pinker’s Biological View Of Human Nature

• The decadent writer writes shamelessly of himself, convinced that his life is special enough to impress those who have … made miserable by frankness, his handsome condescension, his elitism, and his perfect lack of candor were fatal gifts, ...
  • The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, in The Devil's Advocates: Decadence in Modern Literature, p. 52

R

• Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I'd rather not belong to.
  • Gilda Radner, in Psycho-Oncology, p. 2
• In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites.
  • Jean-François Revel, "Europe's Anti-American Obsession" (2003), The View From Abroad, The American Enterprise.
• In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.'
  • John Ridley, in The Elitist Tipping Point

S

• The only genuine elite is the elite of those men and women who gave their lives to justice and charity.
  • Sargent Shriver, in The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation

T

• Millions of South Africans live in grueling, demeaning, dehumanizing poverty, while black empowerment seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled.
  • Desmond Tutu, in Africa 2013, p. 315

W

• Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
  • George Will (2009), in Embracing Your Inner Mediocrity: Making Peace with Reality, p. 19

• A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production.
  • Robert Anton Wilson (2012), Robert Shea, in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, p. 595

Z

• Being slim is the new elitism. Thinness today says that you are richer, smarter and more successful than the overweight masses. With our lives and food chain set up to make us fat -- I mean, you can't drive down any highway in America and find a grapefruit -- a guy needs to be smarter and more determined to get lean. So telling people you lost weight is telling them, Hey, I can outwit the world; I can beat the system.
  • David Zinczenko (2002), in NOTICED; Men Who Step Up to the Scale and Crow

See also

• Elite
• Equality
• Hierarchy