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Ruling Class Quotes

Browse 24 quotes about Ruling Class.

Ruling Class Quotes

“It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.”

WarRealityTruthDeathHumanityMoralityDestructionMadnessHypocrisyCivilizedAggressionEliteWw1JingoismRuling ClassJames Connolly
Author:James Connolly
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“Many DEI trainings and narratives have indeed enabled or produced types of people who seem to be looking for excuses to be offended and to construe, sometimes genuine human slips, as intentional micro and macro aggressions. Even worse, the way things have been done has resulted in people who are quick to play identity cards anytime they are confronted with totally unrelated matters like being incompetent in doing their work or other unrelated professional and personal matters. I am in no way condoning or denying the existence of racism, sexism, and countless other forms of exclusions, marginalization, and even violence against so many vulnerable groups and individuals, but I also can’t in good faith ignore the darker side of this coin. For one side to be true, it doesn’t negate the other darker side. In many workplaces and university campuses, we have armies of people who overuse and even abuse the language of ‘feeling violated’ over things like someone mistakenly not referring to them as “they,” but they remain completely silent and unmoved by countless injustices on campus or at work, let alone about atrocities and genocides in the outside world. We have a type that wastes so much time giving themselves and others the ‘permission’ to indulge in selfish acts of complicity, indifference, and silence under the guise of ‘self-care.’ [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

DiversityRacismElitesEquityDiversity And InclusionMisinformationEquity And InclusionRuling ClassInstitutional Oppression
Author:Louis Yako
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“It is true that Harvard and Yale, as well as other upper-class institutions, offer free tuition, some cash scholarships, and nominal paid employment to the highest-ranking graduates of accredited secondary schools, without regard for the social class origins of these students. One can, it is true, meet a coal miner's or a farmer's son at Harvard, although it is a rare experience. The task of Yale and Harvard, however, is to mold these bright youngsters into unconscious servitors of the ruling class—as lawyers, as corporate scientists, as civil servants, as brokers, bankers, and clergymen. The enforced "democratic" mingling effected by the new house plans assures this result more positively now than ever, for in the past, many students were made to feel like pariahs by their exclusion from the quasi-aristocratic clubs.”

ClassCapitalismHarvardAristocracyYaleClass StruggleRuling ClassYale UniversityHarvard University
Book:America's 60 Families
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“A Mall and Bullet Holes" While walking in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country devastated and drained by the wars of the global elite, exactly like mine, I arrived at an intersection and noticed a huge mall on the right side… On the left side, there was an old residential building filled with bullet holes that looked like eyewitnesses to all the free death that took place here in a war that has since ended, yet its real causes and the criminals behind it are still lurking in every corner, like infected pus ready to burst at any moment of awareness… I wondered bitterly: When will the world understand that violence never erupts inadvertently, that all violence in our times is premeditated and agreed upon by a small elite that decides in advance that any nation that rejects malls, consumption, and superficiality, must be disciplined with free death for those who resist! It is also agreed upon – and it all costs – that the minds and souls of all survivors must permanently be pierced with bullet holes! In the same intersection, I observed a redhaired elderly woman with sorrowful eyes deep as bullet holes… I then saw a group of youth wearing modern clothes, like those we see in malls… The elderly woman looked at them as if wishing to tell them about all that happened here, but they didn’t notice her existence for their eyes were fixated on their phones… I painfully wondered then: Has anyone told them about what happened here? Can they distinguish the sounds of bombs from those of fireworks? Has this elderly woman, who looked broken and brokenhearted, told them about the real price she’d paid with all the holes left in her heart and her history for the sake of these malls and cheap consumer goods? [Original poem published in Arabic on July 4, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

WarDeathViolenceCapitalismArabic PoetryBalkansDivide And ConquerBosnian WarRuling ClassBalkanization
Author:Louis Yako
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“When will the world understand that violence never erupts inadvertently, that all violence in our times is premeditated and agreed upon by a small elite that decides in advance that any nation that rejects malls, consumption, and superficiality, must be disciplined with free death for those who resist! It is also agreed upon – and it all costs – that the minds and souls of all survivors must permanently be pierced with bullet holes! [From a poem titled "A Mall and Bullets Holes". Original poem published in Arabic on July 4, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

WarViolenceCapitalismArabic PoetryDivide And ConquerRuling ClassBalkanization
Author:Louis Yako
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“You don’t know they’ll be white. Maybe the Cloisters is full of Black people, and you’re the right person to knock on the door.” I could hear a cross laugh in Keller’s quiet voice. “I’m pretty sure that the people who set up shop in a castle are going to be white. Museums: last refuge of the ruling class.”

MuseumsElitesAfrican AmericansBlacksWhitesRuling ClassCloistersElite Class
Book:All the Water in the World
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“I confront the question of whether DEI initiatives are divisive and ineffective. The answer is yes on both counts, but not for the narratives propagated by the American ruling class of oligarchs. Rather, we should consider how DEI initiatives have worked just enough to keep the status quo intact for those at the top, while planting the seeds of division between a significant percentage of marginalized and impoverished white people and every other marginalized and impoverished group in the U.S. and beyond. [From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”

PowerRacismElitesEquityDiversity And InclusionRacism In AmericaDiversity QuotesEquity And InclusionRuling Class
Author:Louis Yako
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“We must be suspicious of the fact that we are still hearing about Trump and his trial, while more important cases, like that of Assange, are shrouded with secrecy and no time was wasted to throw him in jail. The reason for that is that Assange did in fact expose the lies, manipulation, and corruption of the U.S. and world elites, whereas Trump has been doing nothing but serving their interests. Same can be applied to Snowden who is still in exile. The key point here is that it’s time for Trump supporters themselves to begin questioning how they, too, are being co-opted and exploited to keep the nation divided and to crush any possibility of wider resistance in which people see each other as allies fighting for similar causes not divided enemies fighting each other like sardines trapped in a can, while the unlimited wealth and power of the few at the top remain unchecked. [From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”

PowerRacismPropagandaElitesWhite SupremacyAmerican PoliticsDivide And ConquerRuling ClassJulian Assange
Author:Louis Yako
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“Wars have been waged over millions of square miles, significantly larger than the British Empire at its peak. Historically, Islamic conquests stretched from southern France to the Philippines, from Austria to Nigeria, and from central Asia to New Guinea. The Muslim goal was to have a central government, first at Damascus, and then at Baghdad, later at Cairo, Istanbul, and other imperial centres. The local governors, judges, and other rulers were appointed by the central imperial authorities for far off colonies. Islamic law was introduced as the senior law, whether or not wanted by the local people. Arabic was introduced as the rulers’ language, while the local languages frequently disappeared. Then, two classes of residents were established. The native residents paid a tax that their rulers did not have to pay. In each case, these laws allowed the local conquered people less freedom than was given to Muslims.”

LanguageIslamEgyptNigeriaBritish EmpireIstanbulAustriaArabicTaxRuling ClassBhagdadImperial Conquest
Book:We Are One
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“How does Plato solve the problem of avoiding class war? Had he been a progressivist, he might have hit on the idea of a classless, equalitarian society; for, as we can see for instance from his own parody of Athenian democracy, there were strong equalitarian tendencies at work in Athens. But he was not out to construct a state that might come, but a state that had been—the father of the Spartan state, which was certainly not a classless society. It was a slave state, and accordingly Plato’s best state is based on the most rigid class distinctions. It is a caste state. The problem of avoiding class war is solved, not by abolishing classes, but by giving the ruling class a superiority which cannot be challenged. As in Sparta, the ruling class alone is permitted to carry arms, it alone has any political or other rights, and it alone receives education, i.e. a specialized training in the art of keeping down its human sheep or its human cattle.”

PlatoTotalitarianismClass WarfareEgalitarianismCaste SystemRuling ClassPlatonismSpartans
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“The communism of the ruling caste of his best city can thus be derived from Plato’s fundamental sociological law of change; it is a necessary condition of the political stability which is its fundamental characteristic. But although an important condition, it is not a sufficient one. In order that the ruling class may feel really united, that it should feel like one tribe, i.e. like one big family, pressure from without the class is as necessary as are the ties between the members of the class. This pressure can be secured by emphasizing and widening the gulf between the rulers and the ruled. The stronger the feeling that the ruled are a different and an altogether inferior race, the stronger will be the sense of unity among the rulers. We arrive in this way at the fundamental principle, announced only after some hesitation, that there must be no mingling between the classes.”

PlatoTotalitarianismElitismCaste SystemRuling ClassPlatonism
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“The ultimate goal of the political elite is to privatize the air. So as not to destroy their own edifice of democratic compassion they will make provisions for the sick and the poor. Air will be rationed by a privatized bureaucracy and only those who complete a series of stringent means tests will be allowed to breath freely. If this sounds like untenable dystopian sci-fi, you haven’t been paying attention. In the 17th century Dean Jonathon Swift satirically proposed that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies. Many Lords in Westminster at the time took this as a sign that an Irish voice was finally speaking sense. The descendants of these Lords still stalk the corridors of power today. Never underestimate the callousness or the hereditary madness of the ruling class.”

PowerRuling ClassLordsJonathon Swift
Author:Dean Cavanagh
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“When the mainstream media and the ruling class decide to pick on a critical issue, it is usually for two reasons: first, the issue is serious enough and is affecting their interests, and therefore the narrative must be controlled to ensure that the results are in their favor. Second, in doing the former, the ruling class gets to strictly filter and manage the narrative on what needs to be said about any given topic; which ‘experts’ are given the stage to speak; and whose voices are excluded from debates, or even defamed and slandered, if necessary.”

MediaCapitalismPropagandaElitesCorporate CultureNeoliberalismMainstream MediaRuling ClassDeep StateAlternative Facts
Author:Louis Yako
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“Our minds become slaves to those we see as having total power to control us and to cause pain to us. We are quick to give up control of ourselves to those who have the power to rule us as long as they also have the power to feed us. This is the fundamental construct of a feudal society.”

PoliticsWorkWealthPowerRichGiving UpCapitalismEconomicsSlaveryCompromiseEmploymentControlJobRulingWork HardWorkingFeudalismRuling ClassFeudal
Book:The First Dancer: How to be the first among equals and attract unlimited opportunities
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“September 2017 Emmanuel Macron condemns the “laziness” of those in France who, according to him, are blocking his reforms. You’ve always known that this word is reserved for people like you, people who can’t work because they live too far from large towns, who can’t find work because they were driven out of the educational system too soon, without a diploma, who can’t work anymore because life in the factory has mangled their back. We don’t use the word lazy to describe a boss who sits in an office all day ordering other people around. We’d never say that. When I was little, you were always saying, obsessively, I’m not lazy, because you knew this insult hung over you, like a specter you wished to exorcize.”

ViolenceLazinessWorking ClassRuling ClassMacron
Book:Qui a tué mon père
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“Neoliberalism has, to a great extent, succeeded in replacing in-depth, critical, and independent social science with research funded by corporations to serve corporate interests. We are seeing a sharp decline of independent writers and researchers and a sharp rise of UX (user experience) jobs that are often narrow in scope, and solely focused on understanding users not to create a more informed and critical society, but simply to increase numbers, get users to consume more, and to increase profits for the few at the top.”

KnowledgeCapitalismAnthropologyEducation SystemSocial ScienceNeoliberalismUser ExperienceRuling ClassEthics And Science
Author:Louis Yako
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“I argue that the U.S. ruling class has been exploiting and co-opting the already existing structural racism and white supremacy as a divide and conquer tool through Trump to keep people divided and weakened. I contend that the establishment is not divided over Trump as anyone would be misled to think if they compare, for example, the way CNN vs Fox news cover any stories about Trump or his supporters. Rather, we should consider that the U.S. ruling class is using the mainstream media to keep people bitterly divided and distracted from asking more pressing questions about the unlimited wealth, power, and corruption of the ruling class. [From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”

HateTrumpRacismDistractionElitesWhite SupremacyAmerican PoliticsDivide And ConquerRuling Class
Author:Louis Yako
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