Christopher Hitchens Quotes

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It's the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It's been two hundred years at it. It's superb.

The capitalist class rules but does not govern: it contents itself with ruling the government.

All the gang of those who rule us Hope our quarrels never stop Helping them to split and fool us So they can remain on top.

All political power is primarily an illusion …. Mirrors and blue smoke …

All societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

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

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

Even the most repressive regimes seek to maintain the fiction that they have the people’s interest at heart.

The dictators play the United States like a fiddle and get away with it

The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and of all the demagogues, The worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political "it

Ultimately the views of the ruling class become embodied in the law.

If those in charge of our society – politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television – can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

It is a dark, unspoken truth that the powerful - the 'ruling class' - make up the rules as they go along.

Our politicians want to keep us in a negative state because they can easily manipulate us.

The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political...And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show him, every day, that there can be no change.

The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the most prominent men of a ruled class, the more solid and dangerous its rule.

In politics, manipulating reality can take presidence over finding reality.

The state is the executive committee of the ruling class.

When I talk about people wrapping themselves in the flag and hiding behind Jesus - that's an anti-intellectual thing to do in the political process, because legally, allegedly we have a separation between church and state. That's a legal precedent that's never observed. When people are trying to do something that's not in your best interest, they will wrap it in the flag and hide behind Jesus, which is a corrupt thing to do.

In U.S. history, war has served as an important diversionary tactic, causing the people at large to shift their attention away from the state's own criminality and toward real or fictitious devils abroad. Wars have therefore proved to be extremely useful in propping up the political class and preserving it from the public resistance and rebellion that might otherwise have arisen.