Themes

"The decadent writer writes shamelessly of himself, convinced that his life is special enough to impress those who have … made miserable by frankness, his handsome condescension, his elitism, and his perfect lack of candor were fatal gifts, ..."

"This is one of my pet peeves: Countries that will not tax their elite who expect us to come in and help them serve their people are just not going to get the kind of help from us that historically they may have."

"And, since people generally go on from this to talk about elitism versus democracy, I would add that genuinely difficult art is truly democratic."

"Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?"

"Hobbes’s psychology treated what he called vainglory as a pathological condition based on ignorance of man’s vulnerability, on unjustified confidence. This condition can, according to him, be cured by liberal doses of fear. One need only hear what is said today … to recognize how much of modernity is devoted to unmanning this disposition. Elitism is the catch-all epithet expressing our disapproval of the proud and the desire to be first. But, unsupported and excoriated, this part of the soul lives on, dwelling underground, receiving no sublimating education. As with all repressed impulses, it has its daily effects on personality and also occasionally bursts forth in various disguises and monstrous shapes. Much of modem history can be explained by the search of what Plato called spiritedness for legitimate self-expression."

"The Left Elite only pretend to be concerned about what's best for everyone else because it is the most effective way to manipulate you and your children into their abyss."

"What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them."

"As soon as somebody or something stands out as excellent, the other shout goes up: 'Elitism!' And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. 'Standing out' is undemocratic."

"Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try."

"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."

"We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world."

"What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil."

"Analogies are figures intended to serve as fatal weapons if they succeed, and as innocent toys if they fail."

"There are people in government who don't want other people to know what they know. It's just another example of elitism. And I spit on elitism. Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser."

"Being slim is the new elitism. Thinness today says that you are richer, smarter and more successful than the overweight masses. With our lives and food chain set up to make us fat -- I mean, you can't drive down any highway in America and find a grapefruit -- a guy needs to be smarter and more determined to get lean. So telling people you lost weight is telling them, Hey, I can outwit the world; I can beat the system."

"A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production."

"One good analogy is worth three hours discussion."

"The trouble with analogies — and also their greatest strength and value — is that they can work reciprocally. The crowd scene in nightdress that looks (and feels) like the Last Judgment. And the Last Judgment, at least for this play, in its ..."

"If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative."

"That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he stole, and from whom. With the artist it is not how much he took and from whom, but what he did with it."

"Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding."

"Analogy: ... a form of reasoning that is particularly liable to yield false conclusions from true premises."

"Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home."

"The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory."

"The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities."

"Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy in the ebb and flow of love."

"Nothing escapes God's knowledge. This is proved by the witness of the Scriptures and the analogy of the sun, which, although created, yet by its light or heat enters into all things."

"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories. One can imagine that the ultimate mathematician is one who can see analogies between analogies."

"...more so than might be expected in one who was premature in everything, and had exhausted the stock of human folly at an age when it is usually found unbroken. All his deceptions, his prevarications, his political tergiversation, etc., were such as should have been looked for in men of an advanced age, hardened by evil associations, and soured by disappointed pride or avarice."

"Mariano Rajoy frustrates many with his prevarication over a fresh euro-zone bail-out, which now comes with a conditional promise from the European Central Bank (ECB) to help bring down Spain’s stifling borrowing costs."

"If it were a real effort to live in the Middle Ages, your life would be one perpetual prevarication."

"Thou hast prevaricated with thy Friend, By under-hand Contrivances undone me: And, while my open nature trusted in thee, Thou hast stepped in between me and my Hopes, And ravished from me all my Soul held dear."

"...yet when someone like me comes along and shows your hypocrisy and the dangers of that hypocrisy, and of the willingness of prevaricating lobbyists like Hal Halpin to hide what the industry does and how it does it, then you all want to "ban" me from my rejoinders."

"From all the rest I single out you, You are to die-let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you— there is no escape for you."

"Inquiry denotes evil against the goods of faith, sin denotes evil against the goods of charity and love, and prevarication denotes evil against the truths of faith: in as much as this latter is evil proceeding from a perverse understanding, and is thus known from the truths of faith; it is therefore said, I acknowledge my prevarications. Again ‘Remember thy mercies Jehovah, and thy compassions, remember not the sins of my childhood and my prevarication."

"I don't like cryptic conversation. They require a prevaricating nature, which I do not possess. So either you."

"Wash me from mine enquiry, and cleanse me from my sin; for I acknowledge my prevarications and my sin continually before Thee."

"We cannot pardon. We are to say what we take the law to be ; if we do not speak our real opinions, we prevaricate with God and our own consciences."

"The past is necessarily inferior to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy: the past, gloomy prevaricator, execrable tutor?"

"But I'm not experienced!' 'You're not home yet!' 'I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?' 'I left off struggling.' Judge: You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?' Co-respondent: ‘Not to wink, my Lord!"

"Mr. Denman was not prepared to vote all the witnesses guilty of prevarication, without having the evidence previously printed. He had voted for sending the editor to Newgate, because he had heard what he said at the bar of that House."

"I am clearly at opinion that they had no other power, and they could not lawfully do, what I think the record shows they did, constitute themselves a court to try and condemn you for prevarication."

"As to the prevarications which the court charge upon you, I think they must have had an erroneous of opinion of what constituted prevarications, as they certainly had, in my opinion of their power, to take notice of it as an offence."

"Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie."

"All gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications. Verily, it always lifts us higher— specifically, to the realm of the clouds: upon these we place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs –all these gods and overmen. Ah, how weary I am of all the imperfection which must at all costs become event! Ah! How weary I am of poets!"

"We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom."

"Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds."

"My books are not quite the books I was to write when you and I were young. But I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens ..."

"The difference between [perjury and prevarication] consists in this, that perjury is a distinct assertion of that which can be proved not to be, or a denial of that which can be proved to be; whereas prevarication is the giving of contradictory or inconsistent evidence, which affects the credibility of the evidence, though neither the extent of the witness’s falsehood, nor the precise points in which he has departed from the truth be capable of ascertainment."

"The lion out of the forest has smitten the great ones of Jerusalem, the wolf of the plains shall devastate them; the leopard is watching against their cities; every one who goes out shall be torn in pieces, because their prevarications are multiplied, their aversions are become strong."