Matt Taibbi Quotes

And understand: class differences will not save you.

If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.

Doesn't make any difference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on.

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other 'isms' that cause so much suffering in the world.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

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

The Privileged and the People form Two Nations.

The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a) he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't ; b) he has a high IQ, but they don't.

… in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up

Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don't speak English.

... I'm much closer to the people at the bottom than the people at the top, and the latter won't forgive me for it.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

It is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another.

There's always somebody older, richer, more desperate than you.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

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 seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.

Class still matters in Britain today.

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.

It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

England is obsessed with where you came from, and they are determined to keep you in that place, be it in a drawing room or in the gutter.

The money I pay for my cultural experiences came willingly from my own pocket - they were not the result of bread being removed from the mouths of the poor so that Miss Thing here could mince off to the circus smelling of roses.