Cultural Elite Quotes

London clubland divides itself between the St James's refuge for toffs, and the Conquest of Cool, for the arts and media.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'

I think I've come through the art-industrial complex - I've been educated in some of the best institutions and been privy to some of the insider conversations around theory and the evolution of art.

In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite.

All of my contemporaries in L.A. are all graduates of either Yale, Julliard, Trinity. The best of the bunch come from that.

I don't know why the Vice President thinks Mario Cuomo and I are members of the cultural elite. Maybe its because we both know how to spell potato.

My time in Weimar Berlin was the most elegant in my life. I would have parties for a hundred people - writers, scientists, artists.

Our culture will become like it was during the medieval times when there truly was a cultural elite. The rest of the people will just watch television, which will be their only frame of reference.

I would never call myself cultural elite, but you might be cultural elite.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

The art house is an elitist idea.

The message bombarding young adults from the leftist cultural elite is clear; you should think for yourself... by adopting my beliefs as your own.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

To be sure, many cultural elite pastimes are easily mocked and annoying.

I came to the conclusion that most people in America would really like to be able to get a job where they think they're doing something noble and nice and good and it isn't just for the money. But the reason they hate what they call the cultural elite is that they see it as a class that's grabbed all the jobs where you can get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - if it's art, if it's charity, if it's intellectual, if it's political, whatever it might be.

The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).

If you're anxious to shine in the high aesthetic line as a man of culture rare, you must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere.

The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books

Society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class.

If the cultural elite has its way, the U.S. will be much more like Europe.

The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt.

Without an elite in the arts, we have no leaders, which is to say we have no vision, which is to say we have no arts.