Ross Douthat Quotes

Those looking for ideology in the White House should consider this: For the men who rule our world, rules are for other people.

The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.

The party lines don't change, that's what makes them a party and you'd be a fool to think that just because there's a black man in there it's not gonna change the real foundation of the system. Especially when you look at his largest contributor to his campaign, AIG, one of the culprits in the economic meltdown itself.

We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

The poor are prevented from thinking by the discipline of others, the rich by their own.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

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

The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of the ruling class.

Oppression is the essence of power.

Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.

Only powerful people have liberty.

Life is politics.

I think you have a lot of rich and Conservative people who control our country who are racist and their views trickle down through things like tabloid papers.

In a supposedly free and equal country, there is no excuse for our rulers having VIP treatment. On the contrary, there is every reason for them to get what we get, hot and strong.

I don't know why people like being oppressed.

I'm still angry at so much - class, gender, society, the way we are constantly mentally coerced into behaving a certain way without us even knowing it. I feel so oppressed by the weight of it all that I just want to blow a hole in it all.

I guess as far as leftists are concerned, the United States can't qualify as a 'cultured society' simply because we've actually created a society that works.

The morality of a society is not judged by the behaviour of an oppressed class but by the rules and laws made by the state, which either protect or exploit an already depressed section of society.

Having our own children in good schools does not inure us from the ill-effect of others having theirs in poor schools. Having great roads within our gated homes and offices does not help when our fancy cars spill out on to poor public roads.

I so totally refuse to 'make an effort to understand' the people who have become vectors for a fascist spectacular politics.

I think power will do anything to survive and one of its main techniques is the rule of exceptions. So it makes an exception out of people and we worship them, whether that's Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. These people become beatified beyond recognition.

The gruesomeness of 'Death Line' was an absolute necessity for me to bring up the political content of the film. I wanted to show how devastating class distinction could be.

The only way to gain the kinds of often-generational wealth that the 1% has been able to gain is through controlling the populations it relied on to make its wealth.

If we fail to see that there are powers that cause people to be bowed down in bondage, we are going to fight the wrong battle.