Malcolm Bradbury Quotes

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

When men organize themselves into groups, and they make rules based on common or self-interest, it's always tangled and political.

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.

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

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups.

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.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

Girls, in particular, use storytelling to establish hierarchies, a pecking order. There is a sort of jockeying of who is in charge of shared history.

Notwithstanding the supposed egalitarian ethos of some hunter-gatherer societies, humans are a hierarchical social species. We care greatly about where we stand in comparison to some relevant reference group.

There's a lingering notion that elites continue to lead, and the masses will follow. This historic model of influence was predicated on the belief that elites have access to superior information and their interests are interconnected with those of the broader public.

Humans want to know the hierarchy; it's important for there to be one leader.

I think the Indian media suffers from a feudal mindset.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim-for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.

The more tightly packed the group, the greater the need for strict social ranks and orders.

We are a social animal, power only exists in a social sense, we have to work in groups.

The diverse natures of men, combined with the necessity to satisfy in some manner the sentiment which desires them to be equal, has had the result that in the democracies they have endeavored to provide the appearance of power in the people and the reality of power in an elite.

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.

Domination is not that solid and global kind of domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society.

As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

The whole of our civilization is founded on specialization, which implies the enslavement of those who execute to those who coordinate.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

Unquestionably, however, something else is at work, something that cuts deeper into the American psyche. We have a profound hatred of the weak and the poor, and a corresponding groveling terror before the rich and successful, and we're building a bureaucracy to match those feelings.