Takashi Murakami Quotes

One class did not overthrow another; the poor did not supplant the rich. But social relationships—the way people were connected one to another—were changed and decisively so.

I was brought up a stuffed-shirt Englishman. I wasn't very human. What America did for me was to humanize me, democratize me.

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

My accent does slip. When I arrived in England in 1978 at 18, I was shocked to find myself 'the American' at RADA. The English and the Americans have an intense relationship. They helped us out in the Second World War.

An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.

Subordinate classes have usually pushed for democracy, dominant classes nearly always have resisted it.

Individuals often exercise considerable influence upon the fate of society, but this influence is determined by the internal structure of that society and by its relation to other societies

The rich man in his castle / The poor man at his gate, / God made them high or lowly. / And ordered their estate.

We have been taught by experience the danger of the levelling spirit.

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

The rich follow Wealth, and the Poor the Rich.

Women are now in the situation of the mass of mankind a few years since, when science and learning were in the hands of priests, and property was held by vassalage.

Can we blame an elector of the poorer classes, who has only the choice among two or three rich men, for requiring from the one he votes for a pledge to those measures which he considers as a test of emancipation from the class-interests of the rich?

The distribution of wealth ... depends on the laws and customs of society ... what the opinions and feelings of the ruling class make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

This was discussed many times at different levels, and the problem was that it was a prince, a member of the imperial family. If it had been a Prime Minister, it would have been different. Our attitude toward empires was you know what. Absolutely negative. We did not know who could meet him because Stalin could not meet with him.

All great revolutions are led by aristocrats.

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.

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.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.

Under the old social regime, social position had been absolute: born a peasant, died a peasant; born a chieftain, died a chieftain. In the new world, everything was relative. The only real measure of a man’s worth was money — and the accumulation of money has no intrinsic limits.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

Most of the people I've met who are black in other countries look up to the blacks in this country. Though they may talk differently, they are anxious to partake of this country simply because things in their country are not physically on par with what they are here.