Julian Jaynes Quotes

Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.

I intended to be one of the governing class.

You are afraid of the one, I, of the few.... You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy.

All great revolutions are led by aristocrats.

The rich and the well-born, according to the Federalist Papers, was greatly feared by the founders.

The prime minister found something hopeful in the man's eyes and manner. The 30 or so people who run this world analyze one another that way and then make decisions of life and death for us. Scary, but true.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

I mean the truth is, I've always been interested in the whole setup of the Old World.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

It is not difficult to govern. All one has to do is not to offend the noble families.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

In the land of the skunks he who has half a nose is king.

A court is an assembly of noble and distinguished beggars.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

Young man, I have lived in this house many years and have seen the occupants of the White House across the square come and go, and nothing you minor officials or the occupant of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long.

If there are no superior people to look after a population, the common people have no security.

There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy.

What is Aristocracy? A corporation of the best, the bravest.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.

Chile is still at the whim of powerful, traditional elites who sit as a higher societal authority than the elected government.

Kings need the company of the intelligent far more than the intelligent need the company of kings.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man.

One of the most constant laws of history is … immediately [if] any one class becomes preponderant—nobles, clergy, army, or the people—it speedily tends to enslave others.

The present King and Queen are popular, very, and increasingly so, but they have no message for the Labour Party who believe them, and rightly I fear, to be but the puppets of a Palace clique…. Still, it is the aristocracy which still rules England although nobody seems to believe it.