Samuel Johnson Quotes

Just experience tells in every soil That those who think must govern those that toil

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

Those who think must govern those that toil.

There is the work of great men and there is the work of little men. Therefore it is said, 'Some labor with their minds and some labor with their strength. Those who labor with their minds govern others; those who labor with their strength are governed by others.'1 Those who are governed by others support them; those who govern them are supported by them. This is a universal principle.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

The prime minister found something hopeful in the man's eyes and manner. The 30 or so people who run this world analyze one another that way and then make decisions of life and death for us. Scary, but true.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

I'm reluctant to use the word class so much.

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.

I intended to be one of the governing class.

Whatever is the strongest power in society will obtain the governing authority; and a change in the political constitution cannot be durable unless preceded or accompanied by an altered distribution of power in society itself

All great revolutions are led by aristocrats.

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

The central factor in most human beings is power. Politics is the manifestation of the quest for power.

The whole conversation of my work has to do with power and who has it.

For the Anglo-Saxons, food determined a person's position in society.

We all - even at a base level, even a Republican - understand that the people with the money are the ones with the power. We all learn that.

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.