Elite Society Quotes

In my former life I was in insider, as much as anybody else. And I knew what it's like, and I still know what it's like to be an insider. It's not bad, it's not bad. Now I'm being punished for leaving the special club and revealing to you the terrible things that are going on having to do with America. Because I used to be part of the club, I'm the only one that can fix it.

I grew up in a very white, privileged, old-fashioned society in South Africa and went to a boarding school run by nuns.

Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody's equal.

I was considered the luckiest of all the female gypsies since I landed the job as social secretary to Ambassador and Mrs. David Bruce at the American Embassy.

Social class means a hell of a lot and upper class people - no matter how well [Franklin ] Roosevelt did - it was stylish to hate him.

Rich people live in places so removed from everybody else, they operate in circles so incestuous and so closed, they're off on islands. To try to understand their indifference is to understand also their separation from the rest of society.

An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy.

Kelsier smiled. 'It means that you, Vin, are a very special person. You have a power that most high noblemen envy. It is a power that, had you been born an aristocrat, would have made you one of the most deadly and influential people in all of the final empire.' Kelsier leaned forward again. 'But, you weren't born an aristocrat. You're not noble, Vin. You don't have to play by their rules--and that makes you even more powerful.

High-level political wives are by no means new. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when patricians dominated British political life, it was common for politicians' spouses to play an active political role.

I'd been brought up on the Upper East Side in a WASP society, which was death on crutches.

Yeah, 'Gossip Girl' is a good show. It's a real New York show, like 'Sex and the City.'

People are fascinated by the rich: Shakespeare wrote plays about kings, not beggars.

I had a period in my life, maybe a decade or so, in which I was involved in that kind of thing, associating with the elite of various segments of society. It always made me extremely uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to get out of there and change my clothes. The good part about that was getting home and changing into my regular clothes. Taking off the suit and the tie, taking off the tight shoes, and just relaxing. Being away from that stuff. It was stimulating, but I never liked it. I always felt it was a terrible, terrible burden.

Rich people are so eccentric, and I don't think people really realize. Especially by the turn of the century, they were living like rappers, and there was no income tax. They are some of the most fascinating people, and I am endlessly fascinated.

Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.

Davos is probably the world's most elite society, but it dresses itself up as a non-elite event. Don't be fooled. You must wear a specially coloured badge, which shrieks your status to others.

A'Lelia Walker did not subsidize specific writers, but she provided a place for all kinds of people to gather. She was one of the few blacks who had the money to allow her to entertain in the large scale.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

You know well I couldn't bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could.

What is Aristocracy? A corporation of the best, the bravest.

It is essential to rear a generation at the very top of society that has all the qualities needed to lead and give the people the inspiration and the drive to make it succeed. In short, the elite.. Every society tries to produce this type. The British have special schools for them: the gifted and talented are sent to Eton and Harrow.

You write about what you have access to, and I have been fortunate enough to have a front-row seat on the rich and powerful my entire life.

A White House dinner is the American family assembled, from labor leaders to billionaires, actors, architects, academicians and athletes.

It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what does he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man's parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.

The disinterest [of my two great-aunts] in anything that had to do with high society was such that their sense of hearing ... put to rest its receptor organs and allowed them to suffer the true beginnings of atrophy.