Wyndham Lewis Quotes

As soon as politicians start climbing up the ladder, they suddenly become kings. I don't know how it works, but what I do know is that republics came to the world to make sure that no one is more than anyone else. The pomp of office is like something left over from a feudal past: "You need a palace, red carpet, a lot of people behind you saying, 'Yes, sir.' I think all of that is awful."

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

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

The people in this country have always been afraid of power. Now, maybe the powerful are becoming a little afraid of the people.

We cannot rebuild the American Dream here at home by catering to the voices of the privileged and powerful.

There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

To abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself.

When people are educated, class distinction disappears.

What difference does it make whether the women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.

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.

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognizes nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorized it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

Only powerful people have liberty.

He [Andrew Jackson] looked after the little fellow who had no pull.

The Achilles' heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like 'systemic racism' and 'structural inequality.'

'Game of Thrones' has never much concerned itself with shining a torch on the powerless. Their hunger and suffering in a land ravaged by war is of little concern to the story's most powerful characters, whose antics bring so much pain to the people.

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.

Time will change who is in power.

The friendless, the weak, the victims of prejudice and public excitement are entitled to the same quality of justice and fair play that the rich, the powerful, the well-connected, and the fellow with pull thinks he can get.

If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality.

A lot of men got upset at the feminist movement because they had all the toys and we wanted some.

In the highest antiquity, the people did not know that there were rulers. In the next age they loved them and praised them. In the next they feared them; in the next they despised them.

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.