Barry Goldwater Quotes

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.

The Tea Party people say they're angry about socialism, but maybe they're really angry about capitalism. If there's a sense of being looked down upon, it's that sense of failure that's built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers.

Our democracy may have an aristocracy of talent, as Jefferson said – which is fine – but we don’t want everyone else to be left out. Something like that seems to be happening, though.

There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents;... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

I know we have an illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, scrub aristocracy which assumes to know a great deal, but which, when the flowing veil of pretension is torn off, is seen to posses neither talent nor information on which one can rear a useful superstructure.

Senators will associate only with men of their own class; and thus become strangers to the condition of the common people.

Maybe it’s that silver spoon in his [Mitt Romney’s] mouth that keeps him from seeing why the middle class doesn’t pull itself up by its bootstraps, like he did when Daddy loaned him his first million dollars.

The Commoner

I guess it proves that in America anyone can be President.

Surrounded by the evidence of their success, the wealthy come to believe that they are fundamentally better than other Americans and that working people deserve their declining fortunes. They trumpet meritocracy while ensuring that their children enjoy crushing advantages from birth. They have unprecedented access to politicians and use it to push policies that swell their wealth while defunding institutions, such as public education, that sustain opportunities for less-fortunate Americans.

The days of noblesse oblige are long behind us, so our elite's entire claim to legitimacy rests on theories of equal opportunity and upward mobility, and the promise that 'merit' correlates with talents and deserts.

America is a meritocracy.

The Honours List is accused of being too top heavy, rewarding those born with a silver spoon in their mouth - as if hereditary titles and accidents of birth are incompatible with democracy. But if you stop to think about it, what is more democratic than nature?

The rich do not want people who come from poor families to rise to the highest position in the country.

Our country was not built to support blood dynasties or to elevate the rich and famous to a higher ethical or constitutional plain.

The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.

I believe that Britain is becoming more class-conscious, and I quake at the very idea of Old Etonians ruling the world again.