Wyndham Lewis Quotes

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

I went to Yale to earn a law degree. But that first year at Yale taught me most of all that I didn't know how the world of the American elite works.

The crowds, the praise, and the power are neither just nor unjust in themselves. As they are typically used in the schools, they represent the values of social order and of individual competitive achievement.

Every race gets the religion it deserves, and only as policemen, pugilists, and priests have they succeeded, here and there a successful lawyer, but nothing more serious.

What I saw is Australia is very much an 'old boys' club. A lot of the ex-players carry a huge amount of weight and what they say, a lot goes, and that was the disappointing thing.

The old Establishment has always preserved its position by not being too exclusive - it has been wily enough to absorb the up-and-coming and convert them to their attitudes and mannerisms.

People in power make the path to power. It means that we will always get the same system, and it's one that is not necessarily in the interest of people's lives.

Boxing is a small world where the same thing that goes on, goes on in corporate America.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.

Disrespect is the weapon of the weak

So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power.

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.

Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.

Let me explain something to you. Look around here. How many people do you count? Sixty, eighty, eighty people? Greeks, Germans, Italians, French, Americans. Tourists from everywhere. Eating, drinking, talking, laughing. And from Bombay - Indians and Iranians and Afghans and Arabs and Africans. But how many of these people have real power, real destiny, real dynamic for their place, and their time, and the lives of thousand of people? I will tell you - four. Four people in this room with power, and the rest are like the rest of the people everywhere: powerless, sleepers in the dream.

There are a lot of people who want to give orders and be bossy that don't deserve respect.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.

The strong and the weak cannot keep company.

The inability to grasp the pathology* of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.

There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. 'Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.

Maybe the Merlin was right. Maybe its better to look stupid but strong, than it is to look smart but weak, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to believe that the world stage bears that strong a resemblance to high school.