Elite Perception Quotes

The elite cannot understand why President Trump is liked by so many Americans, nor why people flock to his rallies. Yet, it's in part because they believe he 'gets' them. They believe he understands and, most importantly, respects their economic values and their dreams.

Prince Charles has doomed himself by so clearly wanting to be thought clever and cultured: the clever, cultured people don't buy it, and the people don't want a clever, cultured ruler.

Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.

Revolutions, when they erupt, appear to the elites and the establishment to be sudden and unexpected. This is because the real work of revolutionary ferment and consciousness is unseen by the mainstream society, noticed only after it has largely been completed.

I said that liberals think people who live in the middle of the country are a bunch of jerks, and obviously all liberals don't think that. But I will tell you what, an awful lot of liberal elites think that.

We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That's just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.

My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching - 'Well,' I thought, 'my father's that,' and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.

You have to live among rich liberals to understand what they're saying. You'll never believe what they mean by 'middle class.' They mean themselves.

It is always said that Europe is a project of the elite. That's incorrect.

Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.

Harvard is nerd rehab. You have to check yourself in. Those who seek a school filled with self-proclaimed 'nerds,' seek elsewhere. Dropping the H bomb may brand you as an intellectual or a Kennedy. But it will not give you much nerd cred. And that's a good thing.

If only art were as rare as good taste.

This has been one of the more comedic aspects of this 72 hours - watching a cavalcade of extremely wealthy pundits, editorialists and political operatives from New York and Washington tell me how rural Americans won't stand for this.

When the representatives of "Big Business" think of the people, they do not include themselves.

The people who seem to us to be a very tiny elite, far off and mysterious, actually live in a fairly big world. The way they look at the planet is like they're looking at an index card covered in supply routes. We protestors had imagined ourselves this huge threat. But we were at best bemusing. To the extent that the people inside did care, it was almost like we were paying them a compliment-it reinforced their sense of power.

I went home every night wondering how to get in the Burnley team. It was, 'You've been brought up nicely, had everything handed to you.' Is that what people think just because I went to private school and played instruments?

There is obviously a gap between the public's perception of the role of U.S. foreign policy and the elite's perception.

The Democratic power elite on some level feels delegitimized by its working-class, black and female constituencies. What it wants are the "legitimate" votes of suburban, white, middle-class, affluent males. Even liberal voters and organizations tend on some tacit level to accept the idea that they are not the "real" Americans the Democrats must pursue.