Bernard Hopkins Quotes

There's an unspoken rule in affluent circles that suggests you can always define an individual's status by measuring his or her proximity to the most influential person in the room. And as the maxim goes, closer is always better.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

I always think of young Hollywood as its own little high school. There are the girls who have been working for a while that are kind of like the Queen Bees and the new kids at 'school' just starting out.

I won't be making any friends in the corporate suites.

The great principle of Western society is that competition rules here as it rules in everything else. The best man - that is to say, the strongest and cleverest - is likely to get the best woman, in the sense of the most beautiful person.

In affluent communities, where each member is keenly aware of his or her place within the Byzantine order, attracting the right friends is a blood sport. Chumming up to influential figures who are in a position to help can determine the course of an entire life.

In the eighties, we had the ladies who lunch, the power lunch - everything was power. At the beginning of the nineties, things changed.

America is incredibly professional and corporate.

It's them that take advantage that get advantage in this world.

The crowds, the praise, and the power are neither just nor unjust in themselves. As they are typically used in the schools, they represent the values of social order and of individual competitive achievement.

In the earlier years of my career, I made my own attempts to fit in and be accepted as one of the tribe of Sand Hill Road guys.

There is this brutal side to tennis. It was invented as a game for kings and cardinals and people with a lot of power who didn't have to share the field with other players.

A lot of people think big business in America is a bad thing. I think it's a really good thing. Most people in business are ethical, hard-working, good people. And it's a meritocracy.

We are a democratic, egalitarian people who spend our days desperately trying to climb over each other.

She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top.

Those who rise first are morally superior. It's a universal law.

The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places.

Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.

There are a lot of people who want to give orders and be bossy that don't deserve respect.

The stock market and the gridiron and the battlefield aren't as tidy as the chessboard, but in all of them, a single, simple rule holds true: make good decisions and you'll succeed; make bad ones and you'll fail.

It is a game, the whole ball of wax is a game - your life, my life, politics, economy, hunger.

You know what they say about bein' nice to the right people on the way up Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin' down

Get the winners into the game.

No one has a right to occupy the privileged position all the time, so it should be contested. It should always be messy in there.