Elitist Quotes

In a gallery, there's an expectation of high prices and a somewhat elitist atmosphere. ~ Will Cotton

The bias against the show is purely elitist. We're all like the people on the show - the difference is that some of us speak better, or were born richer. There's nothing that happens on my show that rich people don't experience. ~ Jerry Springer

Maybe you bought this book because you love Sarah Palin and you want to find reasons to hate me. We've got that! I use all kinds of elitist words like "impervious" and "torpor," and I think gay people are just as good at watching their kids play hockey as straight people. Maybe ~ Tina Fey

I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times, I'm wrong, but it's always the hope. ~ Harmony Korine

'Elitist' doesn't need to mean wealthy and conservative; it can also mean specialised and rarefied, and that's no bad thing. ~ Mark Morris

My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it. ~ Rupert Murdoch

And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word-police, the 'wordanistas' over at Websters, are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word!' Well, anybody who knows me knows that I am no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen. ~ Stephen Colbert

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact. ~ Henry Rollins

Goodwill to all.' I know it's techinically 'goodwill to all men,' but in my mind, I drop the 'men' because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/generally bad ist. Goodwill shouldn't be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and all animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I'd even extend the goodwill not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as well include the undead, those supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they're in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we're already being so generous in our big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dolls and stuffed animals. I'm sure Santa would agree. 'Goodwill to all. ~ Rachel Cohn

Go to the farmers market and buy food there. You'll get something that's delicious. It's discouraging that this seems like such an elitist thing. It's not. It's just that we have to pay the real cost of food. People have to understand that cheap food has been subsidized. We have to realize that it's important to pay farmers up front, because they are taking care of the land. ~ Alice Waters

I had a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education in India, and that almost destroyed me. ~ Bunker Roy

If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking. ~ Cheryl Strayed

As long as art is understood and valued as an "absolute" activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear - and then sent away. ~ Susan Sontag

I happily cling to my guns and my God, even if President Obama thinks that that is a simpleminded thing in his elitist heart. ~ Rick Perry

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a "quick return to power," forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible "dialogue" with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls in an elitist game, which it calls "realism."
Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution ... One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders. ~ Paulo Freire

It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me, that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game. ~ Harlan Ellison

I rail a lot against passion, because I feel like passion can be very exclusionary, and very elitist, and it can leave a lot of people feeling like they don't belong... I'm much more interested in allowing people to follow curiosity, which is a much more gentle impulse that doesn't require that you sacrifice your entire life for something. It's more of kind of a scavenger hunt, where you're allowed to pick up these tiny beautiful little clues along the pathway. It's more of a tap on the shoulder that asks you to turn your attention one inch to the left. Oh that's a little bit mildly interesting - what is that? Okay now I'm going to take that clue... I'm going to take it another inch, and I'm going to take it another inch. Rather than this idea that the symphony is born whole, because you sit down and you're struck by lightening and then you start to create. Curiosity I think, is a far more friendly way to do creativity than passion."

...this is why I say the path of curiosity is the scavenger hunt, because it took my probably three years between "gee it would be nice to put some plants in my backyard" to here I am in the South Pacific exploring the history of moss and inventing this giant novel. You know I think everybody thinks that creativity comes in lightening strikes, but I think it comes with whispers. And then the whispers can grow thunderous over time if you are patient enough to explore it, almost in the way that a scientist would.

Be open to - ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise. ~ Lester Bangs

Not everyone would see a passive public as necessarily a bad thing. There are benefits to limiting political engagement to a minority of highly committed citizens, with the majority involving itself only in elections and other major events. This elitist theory exists as as strand within Western democratic thought, with proponents arguing that modern governance is so complex that over-politicisation of issues and over-participation by the masses is an liability: it would add an irrational element to governance that could undermine democracy. Sustainable democracy instead requires a fairly passive mass, such that most matters are debated and settled within the political elite, at least when things are running smoothly ~ Cherian George

The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated. ~ William E. Simon

Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Liturgy puts us to work along with all the others who have been and are being put to work in the world by and with Jesus following our spiritually-forming text. Liturgy keeps us in touch with all the action that has been and is being generated by the Spirit as given witness in the biblical text. Liturgy prevents the narrative form of Scripture from being reduced to private individualized consumption.

Understood this way, 'liturgical' has little to do with choreography in the chancel or an aesthetics of the sublime. It is obedient, participatory, listening to Holy Scripture in the company of the holy community through time (our two-thousand years of responding to this text) and in space (our friends in christ all over the world). High-church Anglicans, revivalistic Baptists, hands-in-the-air praising charismatics, and Quakers sitting in a bare room in silence are all required to read and live this text liturgically, participating in the holy community's reading of Holy Scripture. there is nothing 'churchy' or elitist about it; it is a vast and dramatic 'story-ing,' making sure that we are taking our place in the story and letting everyone else have their parts in the story also, making sure that we don't leave anything or anyone out of the story. Without sufficient liturgical support and structure we are very apt to edit the story down to fit our individual tastes and predispositions. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I'm straightforward with my kids, I take my kids out and I bring my daughter to dance lessons. I'm teaching my son how to ski, and my wife supports them and my wife has some issues. What, you just dismiss them? You just walk away? I don't walk away from anyone, Bill, in life! I'm sitting here and support people that are down and out! All these rich and elitist people, I'm sick of them! I'm sick of them! No, they're perfect. They don't do nothing! Get outta here! 'They don't do nothing!' They're the biggest crooks around! ~ Rob Ford

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life. ~ Matthew Fox

The girl slid into the back seat of the town car, tugging at the hem of her dress like she was afraid she might leave a stain on the upholstery. ~ John McNee

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day. ~ Danny Glover

Life in cyberspace is often conducted in primitive frontier conditions, but it is a life which, at its best, is more egalitarian than elitist and more decentralized than hierarchical. It serves individuals and communities, not mass audiences, and it is extraordinarily multi-faceted in the purposes to which it is put. ~ Mitch Kapor

Whether the criticism of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments expressed by the leaders of the women's rights movement was justifiable or not is still being debated. But one thing seems clear: their defense of their own interests as white middle-class women - in a frequently egotistical and elitist fashion - exposed the tenuous and superficial nature of their relationship to the postwar campaign for Black equality. Granted, the two Amendments excluded women from the new process of enfranchisement and were thus interpreted by them as detrimental to their political aims. Granted, they felt they had as powerful a case for suffrage as Black men. Yet in articulating their opposition with arguments invoking the privileges of white supremacy, they revealed how defenseless they remained - even after years of involvement in progressive causes - to the pernicious ideological influence of racism. ~ Angela Y. Davis

I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent. ~ Twyla Tharp

There is no glory in the sacrificing of oneself in the name of imperialism by order of elitist politicians. But this is what our young service members are led to believe. ~ Aaron B. Powell

I don't want to live in a monoculture of any kind. I don't want to live in a wealthy monoculture, a black monoculture. I don't want to live in an elitist, progressive monoculture. ~ Richard Benjamin

There is something wrong with this world." She stood like she was making a speech. "Something very wrong when it's the twenty-first century and this type of elitist travesty is still being perpetuated. ~ Alex Flinn

Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.) ~ Hilary Mantel

Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd. ~ Alberto Manguel

I know it's technically goodwill to all men, but in my mind, I drop the men because that feels segregationist/elitist/sexist/generally bad ist.
Goodwill shouldn't be just for men. It should also apply to women and children, and all animals, even the yucky ones like subway rats. I'd even
extend the goodwill not just to living creatures but to the dearly departed, and if we include them, we might as well include the undead, those
supposedly mythic beings like vampires, and if they're in, then so are elves, fairies, and gnomes. Heck, since we're already being so generous in our
big group hug, why not also embrace those supposedly inanimate objects like dolls and stu ~ Rachel Cohn

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone. ~ Richard Attenborough

The NRA made an ad saying that Obama is elitist because his kids have armed guards. Yeah, that crazy Obama thinking his kids need special protection. I love the NRA accusing anyone of being paranoid. It's like a septic tank saying, 'You need a mint.' ~ Bill Maher

Our Founding Fathers were proud that Americans were trusted with arms because they knew that only when people are armed could they truly be thought of as free citizens. And that's where the circle closes. Those who want to deprive you of your right to keep and bear arms are intending to deprive you of your freedom, period. Like the criminals their policies encourage, these elitists know that it is always best to disarm victims before you enslave them. ~ Charley Reese

I don't want a president like me! I suck, okay. I want an elitist, smart guy. ~ Denis Leary

. . . [A]ny history that deals with the efforts of the populace to defend itself from the abuses of wealth and tyranny is people's history . . . A people's history should be not only an account of popular struggle against oppression but an exposé of the anti-people's history that has prevailed among generations of mainstream historians. It should be a critical history about a people's oppressors, those who propagated an elitist ideology and a loathing of the common people that distorts the historical record down to this day. ~ Michael Parenti

The belief that there is a difference between good and bad, meaningful and meaningless, profound and vapid, exciting and banal - this belief was once fundamental to musical education. But it offends against political correctness. Today there is only my taste and yours. The suggestion that my taste is better than yours is elitist, an offence against equality. But unless we teach children to judge, to discriminate, to recognise the difference between music of lasting value and mere ephemera, we give up on the task of education. Judgment is the precondition of true enjoyment, and the prelude to understanding art in all its forms. ~ Roger Scruton

When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Many outsiders see the art world as elitist and it is, except it is also oddly down-to-earth and embracing of oddballs who don't fit in well anywhere else. ~ Sarah Thornton

Gun-control has always been an elitist method of controlling the common ... ~ Charley Reese

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist. ~ Alice Waters

I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to. ~ Lulu

People get very trapped where they are. When they hear 'fashion' they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist. ~ Vera Wang

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I laughed when she said "utilize" and she said "what?" and I said "just utilize, it's a meaningless word" and then she tried to tell me that it "communicated" something different from the word "use" and the way she looked at me, chuckling, glancing over at James like "oh, how sweet, it tried to talk," made me so mad that I might have said, maybe, something along the lines of "yeah, it communicates something, it's a real first-gen-college-grad kind of word, like your parents are small-town conservative Christians who didn't have any books in the house, and you're self-conscious about your upbringing so you want to stand out by using elitist intellectual language, but you don't actually know any long words, so you just truss up the word 'use' for no fucking reason other than to try to make people feel like you're the one with the big mental dick, even though 'utilize' is basically just administrative jargon and completely déclassé to them that knows. ~ Halle Butler

Jobs was a strong-willed, elitist artist who didn't want his creations mutated inauspiciously by unworthy programmers. To him it would be as if someone off the street added some brush strokes to a Picasso painting or changed the lyrics to a Dylan song. ~ Walter Isaacson

Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise. As a community, far from being elitist (which would, in this context, mean excluding the unwashed masses), it is anti-elitist (which, in this context, means that expertise is not accorded any special respect, and snubs and disrespect of expertise is tolerated). ~ Larry Sanger

Our education system is today run by left-wing elitists who believe the US is too big, too arrogant, and must be reigned-in ... Real sad. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser. ~ Tom Clancy

One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group. ~ Lesley Garrett

I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything. ~ Michel Hazanavicius

It totally was elitist,' Julia says. 'So? There's nothing wrong with elitist. Some stuff is better than other stuff; pretending it's not doesn't make you open-minded, it just makes you a dick. ~ Tana French

Chloe narrowed her eyes. "Americans are all the same. Arrogant, self-entitled trash. You are evidently no exception." She looked away. "Huh, and here I assumed you had the corner on self-entitlement. Then again, I guess it complements that elitist attitude you've got going on. ~ Emily Albright

Some people think that movements, such as the movements in ballet, are a higher cultural expression, whereas some are just dirt. I think it is elitist to think that a trained movement is more acceptable than untrained and possibly unrehearsed movements. ~ Yoko Ono

I don't think there's a less elitist thing on earth to do than to try and reach out and connect with another human being . . . And that's what the best writing does, that's what art does. It looks a reader in the eye, and it proceeds honestly with that reader, and nakedly. There is a compact there, a bond, a relationship, a union, a symbiosis . . . It's not about you. Whether you're a genius or an idiot savant. It's about the work. The work is more important than you. So it's not about back-claps and plaudits and "isn't that author smart." It's about, "this book really connected with me. And even though you, my friend, are very different from me, I'm lending it to you, because I think it will connect with you as well." Community. Across the eras. Between people who have never met, who will never meet, who are nonetheless bound in something together, in different ways. ~ Colin Fleming

Engaging spirits isn't an elitist ability or industry, it's being active in the connection with All Things. It's innate to us all. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

She was an uptight elitist bitch who considered fast food unworthy of being fed to dogs, but when she did something she did it wholeheartedly, with perverse gusto, as if to show she was so far beyond irony she'd circled back to authenticity. ~ Leah Raeder

I'm regarded outside New York University as a looney tunes leftie, self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university, I'm regarded as a typical, old-fashioned, white male liberal elitist. I like that. I'm on the edge of both; it makes me feel comfortable. ~ Tony Judt

Democrats can cackle all they want about the gaffe-prone Romney's elitist cultural insensitivity in Jerusalem. Their hero Obama is no more willing to acknowledge and question the racial Darwinism that substitutes culture for genes than he is to recognize and criticize Israel's racist oppression of the Palestinians. He at once embodies, epitomizes, and embraces that cultural white supremacism in a way that does no small damage to non-white prospects at home and abroad. ~ Paul Street

For the record," I interject, "I don't agree with Lo. I'm not a comic book elitist." Anyone can read comics, and if you don't it's perfectly okay to enjoy the characters in other mediums. ~ Krista Ritchie

Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small. ~ David Ives

There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist. ~ Stephen Malkmus

Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant. ~ Judith Martin

While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122) ~ David N. Elkins

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ~ H.L. Mencken

I grew up listening to hits, and if I write something I feel, I think that's pretty mass appeal. I'm not very elitist with music. Love is universal; a great melody is universal; it goes around the world; it's not just American. A great song can touch the world. ~ Diane Warren

In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right. ~ Bryan Caplan

Cultural Marxism, now called "Political Correctness" is a loaded gun that one puts to their own head. The narrative illusion normalizes the abnormal and is an elitist weapon over minions for citizen vs. citizen policing for establishment control. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Center For Cyber Influence Operations Studies

Labelling is no longer a liberating political act but a necessity in order to gain entrance into the academic industrial complex and other discussions and spaces. For example, if so called "radical" or "progressive" people don't hear enough "buzz" words (like feminist, anti-oppression, anti-racist, social justice, etc.) in your introduction, then you are deemed unworthy and not knowledgeable enough to speak with authority on issues that you have lived experience with. The criteria for identifying as a feminist by academic institutions, peer reviewed journals, national bodies, conferences, and other knowledge gatekeepers is very exclusive. It is based on academic theory instead of based on lived experiences or values. Name-dropping is so elitist! You're not a "real" feminist unless you can quote, or have read the following white women: (insert Women's Studies 101 readings). ~ Krysta Williams

We are attempting to build, within our movement, non-exploitative ways of relating to one another based on trust and concern rather than political expediency. We have serious personal/political intentions in breaking down hierarchical and elitist structures, and for experimenting with leaderless groups and collective decision making. In dealing with the media these revolutionary principles and practices are destroyed. The media works to create leaders, it knows no way of relating to us on our own terms. Being interviewed and presented as a leader is a real ego trip
the media brings out the most counter-revolutionary traits in people. Elitism, dissension and division are the ultimate results. ~ Nancy Ferro

I only know what it's like to be an author with social media. I can't compare. I do think we lose the mystery of the author. Today, I get tons of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers, and my goal with Twitter and Facebook is, if someone reaches out to me, I'm going to respond to them. I don't want to be an elitist author who is untouchable. I'm just a regular person, too. I will always respond to everybody. ~ Matt De La Pena

We are only afraid of death as long as we do not know who we are, but once we know ourselves objectively to be a child of God, we are already home and our inheritance is given to us ahead of time. Then we can begin living and enjoying instead of climbing, proving, or defending. Our false self, as all religions say in one way or another, must "die before we die." Only then can we sincerely say with Francis, "Welcome, Sister Death" which he said on this day in 1226. Those who face this first death of dying to self lose nothing that is real. And so, "the second death can do them no harm," as Francis says in his "Canticle of the Creatures." Death itself will only "keep opening, and opening, and opening," which is what resurrection means.

All of this creates a very different form and shape to our spiritual life. It is no longer elitist, separatist, or competitive, but changes our deepest imagination in the direction of simplicity. Our worldview will not normally change until we place ourselves, or are placed, in new and different lifestyle situations… You do not think yourself into a new way of living, you live yourself into a new way of thinking. ~ Richard Rohr

I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unless the latter is a friend or a relative. Consequently, most of the human race doesn't matter much to me, outside the normal and necessary frame of courtesy and the obligation to respect human rights. I see no reason to squirm around apologizing for this. I am, after all, a cultural critic, and my main job is to distinguish the good from the second-rate, pretentious, sentimental, and boring stuff that saturates culture today, more (perhaps) than it ever has. I hate populist [shit], no matter how much the demos love it. ~ Robert Hughes

The humanities don't belong to some elitist group ... knowledge as a whole should be embraced. ~ Ruth Simmons

We all know the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. We need to know the Lincoln of the Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and of the Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, both talks in which he vents his favorite enthusiasms. We need to understand his thirst for economic and industrial development. We need to realize that he was a lawyer for corporations, a vigorous advocate of property rights, and a defender of an "elitist" economics against the unreflective populist bromides of his age. We need to focus on his love for the Founders as guides to the American future. We need to grapple with his ferocious ambition, personal and political. ~ Rich Lowry

I went to a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education in India, and it almost killed me. I was all set to be a diplomat, teacher, doctor - all laid out. ~ Bunker Roy

The Guinness book is a very elitist organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't. ~ Jack White

To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist. ~ Florence King

Fire and fury! These people didn't appreciate my art, laughed at my clothes, my looks, and made fun of my protruding ears. 'Floppy,' they called me. And the teachers and principals let it all happen. They didn't give a shit. Whatever got them through the day without conflict or controversy worked for the teachers, but where were the parents? They taught their kids to be elitist snobs. These deaths are on you, assholes! ~ Mark M. Bello

The master demon Screwtape identifies elitist humanity's tendency toward an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men. ~ C.S. Lewis

There are many fans of hard rock music that have been wrongly pigeonholed as apathetic. This music is not music for the elitist coffeehouse culture in SoHo. It' s rock 'n' roll music for kids across the land, and I think that makes it much more subversive in a way, in that it has the form and the function of a powerful, populist music, but it can carry very incendiary messages. ~ Tom Morello

The anti-elitist values in America, I think, are very destructive to education. ~ Joshua Jackson

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

You always said that no one would strive for education if they knew how unbelievably small the number of truly educated people actually was, or ever could be. But that it was impossible to achieve even this small quota of truly educated people unless a great mass of people were tricked, seduced, into going against their nature and pursuing an education. As a result, we must never publicly betray the ridiculous disproportion between the number of truly educated people and the size of our monstrously overgrown educational system. That is the real secret of education, you said: Countless people fight for it, and think they are fighting for themselves, but at bottom it is only to make education possible for a very few. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A "racist" thinks themselves better than other races. An "elitist" thinks they are better than everyone. ~ A.E. Samaan

To the elitist hedonist, life is the avoidance of boredom and routine. ~ Timothy Leary

For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves. ~ Michel Onfray

There is nothing more 'elitist' than thinking our palate
pleasure can ever justify a second of suffering or
a single death. Please go vegan. ~ Gary L. Francione

I can't help but recall, at this point, a horribly elitist but very droll remark by one of my favorite writers, the American "critic of the seven arts", James Huneker, in his scintillating biography of Frédéric Chopin, on the subject of Chopin's étude Op. 25, No. 11 in A minor, which for me, and for Huneker, is one of the most stirring and most sublime pieces of music ever written: "Small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it."

"Small-souled men"?! Whew! Does that phrase ever run against the grain of American democracy! And yet, leaving aside its offensive, archaic sexism (a crime I, too, commit in GEB, to my great regret), I would suggest that it is only because we all tacitly do believe in something like Hueneker's' shocking distinction that most of us are willing to eat animals of one sort or another, to smash flies, swat mosquitos, fight bacteria with antibiotics, and so forth. We generally concur that "men" such as a cow, a turkey, a frog, and a fish all possess some spark of consciousness, some kind of primitive "soul" but by God, it's a good deal smaller than ours is - and that, no more and no less, is why we "men" feel that we have the perfect right to extinguish the dim lights in the heads of these fractionally-souled beasts and to gobble down their once warm and wiggling, now chilled and stilled protoplasm with limitless gusto, and not feel a trace of guilt while doing so. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

Art is central to all our lives, not just the better-off and educated ... I know that from my own story, and from the evidence of every child ever born - they all want to hear and to tell stories, to sing, to make music, to act out little dramas, to paint pictures, to make sculptures. This is born in and we breed it out. And then, when we have bred it out, we say that art is elitist, and at the same time we either fetishize art - the high prices, the jargon, the inaccessibility - or we ignore it. The truth is, artist or not, we are all born on the creative continuum, and that is a heritage and a birthright of all of our lives. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Oh sure, and you know who listens to them? Pansy, overeducated know-it-alls, and you know who listens to them? Nobody! Who's going to care about some PBS-NPR fringe minority that's out of touch with the mainstream? The more those elitist eggheads shouted "The Dead Are Walking," the more most real Americans tuned them out.


So, let me see if I understand your position.


The administration's position.


The administration's position, which is that you gave this problem the amount of attention that you thought it deserved.


Right.


Given that at any time, government always has a lot on its plate, and especially at this time because another public scare was the last thing the American people wanted.


Yep.


So you figured that the threat was small enough to be "managed" by both the Alpha teams abroad and some additional law enforcement training at home.


You got it.


Even though you'd received warnings to the contrary, that it could never just be woven into the fabric of public life and that it actually was a global catastrophe in the making.


[Mister Carlson pauses, shoots me an angry look, then heaves a shovelful of "fuel" into his cart.]


Grow up. ~ Max Brooks

September 11th has produced only miniature heroes because our culture has freed itself from many of the old, dangerous, elitist fantasies of heroism ... But in so doing, we have not only tamed and diminished heroes. We have risked taming and diminishing ourselves. ~ Rory Stewart

I'm tired of being told it's elitist to call stupid behavior stupid. Remember when you were just a tot and thought it might be a good idea to stick your wee-wee in the electrical socket? Hopefully, you hade a mom who kicked you in the behind and called you stupid. There are times when mincing words and pleasant euphemisms simply don't cut it. Sometimes, you need to call stupid by its given name. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive? ~ Richard Dawkins

I think we could all be a bit more elitist. ~ Rufus Wainwright

To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it ... it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling. ~ Ryan Adams