John Leo Quotes

It used to be that readers were relegated because they considered themselves far above society, and so the metaphor of the ivory tower developed. Now there's still this idea that the reader doesn't take part in the social game and in politics, the res publica, but for other reasons: he doesn't do it because he's not making any money.

In a school where everyone is famous or rich or whatever, you have a culture, 'What does your dad do?' 'What does your mom do?'

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.

It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.

'Posh' is not really political. I didn't want to aim a brickbat at the system. Or to bash Old Etonians. It was always the class and privilege aspect of that world that I was most drawn to. There is something endlessly fascinating about imagining something you could never be involved in.

With a few notable exceptions, literary fiction in the U.K. is dominated by an upper and upper middle-class clique who usually have a tin ear for the demotic and who portray working-class characters with, at best, a benevolent condescension.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

In the modern world, it is not the poor and the oppressed who have led the great revolutions and/or carried out the worst deeds of violence; rather, it is militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.

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

I do not wish to see men of culture asking to be entrusted with power

TED is certainly a gathering of an incredibly eclectic, incredibly interesting community, but it's also an elite community - at least an important portion comes from that global 1%.

Rich people only like being around rich people.

I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.

I came from a background where access to museum culture was rarely granted, and, when you got it, people wondered what the hell you were doing there.

I have a class prejudice - against the upper class, which is foolish.

Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.

Wherever the appearance of a conventional aristocracy exists in America, it must arise from wealth, as it cannot from birth. An aristocracy of mere wealth is vulgar everywhere. In a republic, it is vulgar in the extreme.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can be considered to be real and of the people. And when you begin to have the mass of populus striving for something that's not worth striving for, then tremendous amounts of energy go into...the maintenance of that which is worthless.

Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one.

He sprang from the grass roots of the country clubs of America.

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept

I get along with everyone except for men my age, who are bourgeois or retired or boring.