Elite Influence Quotes

Barack Obama is a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

Three hundred men, who all know each other direct the economic destinies of the Continent and they look for successors among their friends and relations. This is not the place to examine the strange causes of this strange state of affairs which throws a ray of light on the obscurity of our social future.

The masses are absolutely being manipulated by those in power.

Concentration of ownership in the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well.

It's very un-American to say nice things about elites. Elites are often terrible. It's not like we've ever had a perfect set of benevolent democratic elites ruling over our country. But the fact of the matter is that a representative system of democracy delegates power to elites.

While President Bush likes to project an image of strength and courage, the real truth is that in the presence of his large financial contributors, he is a moral coward.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions.

Opinion elites begin to shape a debate.

I didn't write much until I turned 40. Up until then I felt constrained by a sense of the discipline of New Testament studies and a sense of the ruling elite in theology and biblical studies.

The elite interests must not crowd out the interests of the citizens.

Washington, as we know it, is essentially run by men and women who are not elected or even appointed to their posts, staff members unaccountable to traditional constituencies. They rise according to the needs and whims of their own special constituency of elites.

The question is, do we have a shadow government? And, if we do, who are those intelligent minority that is -- that is guiding us through? And where are they guiding us to? If you skip past all of the puppets and the strings, if you stop looking at the puppets themselves, you have to see who's behind the puppets. Who is choosing the puppets and the players? Who's the puppet master? George Soros.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

The pressure on language to deteriorate does not come merely from below, from the "democratic" lev-elers. It comes also from above, from the fancy jar-gonmongers, idle game players, fashionable coteries for second-rate intellectuals.

I don't think we're as divided as many in the elite would have us believe.

Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things.

It is not difficult to govern. All one has to do is not to offend the noble families.

There has to be - you know, this is like what I think Americans really have trouble with, an economy that's working for the privileged few, and there those privileged few are getting special favors from the political elite.

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.

These [rich peoples] movements sell their efforts not as benefitting the rich alone—that would be too … tacky. Instead they claim to protect freedom, promote growth, safeguard the Constitution or fend off the ever-more-intrusive government.