Elizabeth Janeway Quotes

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

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

It's not really an original idea, but there's something that goes along with power and celebrity that starts to make you feel like you're impervious to certain forces that the rest of us have to live with.

Only powerful people have liberty.

The people who are the most powerful and have the most money sometimes don't value other people.

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

Language does not make one an elite.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

The scum of the People are most Tyrannical when they get the Power, and treat their Betters with the greatest Insolence.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

Powerful people maneuver for position and worry endlessly about who is in and who is out, who is up and who is down, forgetting those people whose toil and sweat sends us here and pays our way.

You can’t be rich, strong, and loved, particularly by those who are not rich or strong.

Water does tend to flow up hill toward money and power.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

… the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

I worry Mr. Trump believes he's special just because he's Mr. Trump and that the rules don't apply to him and the people around him.

Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security, and prestige, it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is entitled to privilege.

The worst country I ever lived in, the old U.S.S.R., was crammed with privileges for the political elite. They had their own hospital, their own shops, country houses, and blocks of flats, special lanes on the streets so they could bypass the traffic in their special cars.

Privilege is provisional. It can be denied, withheld, offered grudgingly, and summarily withdrawn.

I treat everyone with the same respect they treat me with. Just because I earn more money doesn't make me more special than them or give me the right to talk to them in a certain manner.

I was a grown-up when 'celebrity' happened. So I knew exactly what it was like to be in line at a restaurant and watch someone famous walk in and get a table immediately. I knew I didn't like that; I don't want to make somebody else feel the way I felt.

... anything a powerful group has is perceived as good, no matter what it is, and anything a less powerful group has is not so good, no matter how intrinsically great it might be.