Timothy Leary Quotes

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

I'm seen as a chronicler of the class system, which I don't think is unfair.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

The great families have their privileges.

Them’s that got the gold makes the rules.

Sadly, the pernicious ironies of privilege talk are generally lost on those who claim to be most aware of privilege.

I represent both the underdog and the overdog in our society.

When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before.

I do have strong feelings about the aristocracy: they serve a purpose, but it's a sort of insular strand of society.

The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Class still matters in Britain today.

I don't think we live in a particularly equal society.

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups.

People don't find the personal lives of people with much, much more power than any celebrity would have - don't find their personal lives interesting.

The rich and the well-born, according to the Federalist Papers, was greatly feared by the founders.

Knowledge has always flowed upwards to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.