Elites Quotes

“You can’t dethrone a king if you don’t know they exist.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“Earthlings, full of diversity, generally weren't hostile toward each other. The Earth was like a big insect jar. Insects put into a jar together tended not to fight unless the jar was agitated enough. If the jar owners put different types of ants in the same jar without agitating their habitat enough, they might just work together to overthrow the jar owners and build a happy society where everyone was equal and free. And we can't have that. Gotta keep shakin' that jar.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“The common man already possesses the power they wished they had, they just don’t know it, and the powerful few do their best to keep that knowledge from them.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“Humans who thought they were advancing around the chessboard of life as knights and bishops were actually among the multitude of pawns, advancing like fodder to their inevitable demise for the true kings residing behind the curtains, whose presence was invisible to virtually all the pieces on the chessboard.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.”
― Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit

“We’ve learned that the most effective way at getting the sheep to willingly hand over their rights is to use a matter that’s life threatening. If they think their lives and their loved ones’ lives are in jeopardy, they’ll quickly agree to whatever we say. Even better than a virus outbreak is to make them think the whole planet will become inhabitable—a scenario where everyone would die. That’s why our Global Warming—which we changed to Climate Change—is our most important agenda. Instead of the reality of climate change being cyclical, of course, we make them think it’s humans’ fault and that way we can drastically mold their way of living to suit our needs. They’ll do whatever we tell them, give up all their rights and become completely dependent on us. Along with using technology for control, our Climate Change agenda is key.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“I know where a lot of them [the elite or elitists] live.

Where's that?

Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there.”
― John McCain

“much of our suffering often arises from living a lifestyle that is out of sync with our inner needs. This implies that a genuine path to healing often lies in making fundamental shifts within our lifestyles and thought patterns. Only by reevaluating and recalibrating our approach to life can we address the root causes of our discomfort and stagnation.
Regrettably, mainstream medicine often fails to endorse such transformative approaches. Instead, a deceptive narrative has been meticulously crafted by pharmaceutical giants, promoting the idea that pills capable of altering brain chemistry are the panacea for all our struggles. This untruthful and misleading notion has ensnared many, encouraging them to seek solutions in drugs rather than in meaningful changes. This can explain why many people remain stuck in toxic and self-destructive lifestyles that only bring gloom and doom into their lives.”
― Enric Mestre Arenas

“Here we must ask a critical question: what does it mean when American media outlets deliberately censor and silence anything related to Palestine, the voices of war atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria, while at the same time glorifying the Ukraine war or presumably covering Black Lives Matter or police brutality against black people? Can we believe that such media has good intentions? Can we believe that they really care about Black people, or are they more interested in deepening the divide in the society? I personally find this suspicious and ill intentioned. I believe the purpose here is not to support any Black causes or push for meaningful changes, but rather, exploiting the already existing and strong structural racism and white supremacy weaved into the fabric of the entire society to make people even more alienated from each other. Mistaken are those who think that “divide and conquer” is only practiced in remote places and in so-called “third world” countries. There are many ways to divide and conquer, but we need to have the right critical tools to detect and fight against them, as is the case here.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“When all the world is a stage, the best liars will rise to the top.”
― Jack Freestone

“How can a deep-seated distrust of all elites and institutions be squared with unwavering admiration for one leader and party? This is why populists ultimately depend on the mystical notion that the strongman embodies the people. When trust in bureaucratic institutions like election boards, courts, and newspapers is particularly low, an enhanced reliance on mythology is the only way to preserve order.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“One of the biggest challenges with words in the language we use is the assumption that they should mean the same thing to each one of us, or the more dangerous assumption that we all have reached consensus on what they should mean. And because ruling classes know that every word can be deep and mean many things to each of us, they are sure to hammer words repeatedly against the anvil of our consciousness and imagination, until these words begin to mean what they want them to mean when they fall on people’s ears or encounter their eyes. This is precisely how and why language is extremely slippery and could become a prison or a pair of wings to fly with, depending on how we use and nourish it.”
― Louis Yako

“Media members and politicians were largely affluent and privileged and out of touch with what was happening on the ground in other parts of the country.”
― Jared Yates Sexton, The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis

“They were elegant. Bored yet all seemed to carry perfect self-assurance. They all seemed to be in no rush. They were comfortable in this environment. No tense muscles, no tense movements. No twitching and no slouched shoulders.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“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]”
― Louis Yako

“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]”
― Louis Yako

“[T]he American ruling class has been deliberately capitalizing on and exploiting the history and wounds of racism and white supremacy for the sake of producing more divide, keeping potential and existing Trump supporters feeling ever more agitated and disenfranchised. The age-old racism and white supremacy are being exploited here without any intention to fix, let alone end, either. This is done to ensure that people in the U.S. remain distracted from the real conversation, which should be about the frighteningly small ruling class that often pretends to be anti-Trump but has been using every social and psychological tool to ensure that what Trump embodies and represents continue to serve their interests.

[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]”
― Louis Yako

“The secret of celebrity power and the most beautiful of girls, and how to seduce them? Well, if you look at a celebrity’s page and pics one hundred times a day, you will kneel to her fake and often satanic power, and she will feed off your worship. But if you do not, and that celebrity or extremely beautiful girl looks at your page, even a couple of times, the power is reversed. So, if you want to seduce a celebrity, and she shows you even glancing curiosity, at that point you can prise her off the rock like a limpet, and then she is lost, flailing around in the scary ocean, which most of us know as the real world, until you rescue her. Celebrities are the most insecure of people, after all, disattached, and scared of the real world.”
― Jack Freestone

“One of the greatest enemies to our freedom and self-development in this modern era is not bombs, corrupt democracies, or the will of ruthless despot dictators. Instead, the enemy we should fear the most is the array of enticing technologies adeptly exploiting our almost limitless appetite for distractions.”
― Enric Mestre Arenas, THE MODERN WORLD AGAINST THE HUMAN SOUL: Exploring modernity's impact on the human spirit and well-being

“the proliferation of highly addictive and distracting superstimuli in our modern world is not solely the result of an economic business model that prioritizes profits over personal wellness; it is also a premeditated and intentional act orchestrated from
the highest echelons of power to keep the masses distracted, spellbound and blind to their own condition of slaves.”
― Enric Mestre Arenas, THE MODERN WORLD AGAINST THE HUMAN SOUL: Exploring modernity's impact on the human spirit and well-being

“On a planet with 300 million species and 7 billion humans, one man determining the future is a dangerous idea. It is dangerous for the Earth, because the anthropocentric, reductionist, and mechanistic assumptions by which Gates is guided are at the root of the ecological crisis that has brought us to the brink.”
― Vandana Shiva, One Earth, One Humanity vs. the 1%

“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]”
― Louis Yako

“The first problem with the word “diversity” is the word itself. Who is diverse in relation to whom? The way diversity is often framed in institutional domains implies that some people are diverse in relation to others. That some need to learn diversity while others have it and bring it to the table. This framing, I argue, has from the start driven a wedge between a significant percentage of marginalized and disadvantaged white people and other marginalized and disadvantaged groups—groups that should naturally be allies, not enemies. The only group that benefits from this divide is a small percentage of privileged whites who use the structure of whiteness to their full advantage.
[From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”
― Louis Yako

“Elites and ruling classes are masters in inventing initiatives intended to keep things unchanged...one of the things the ruling classes master best is framing their own needs and agendas as urgent public agendas or crises.
[From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”
― Louis Yako

“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]”
― Louis Yako

“Political correctness was never supposed to happen. Ever. The problem with politically correct language is already in the term itself: it corrects the language, and in doing so, it politicizes it through such imposed corrections. The problem with political correctness is that it corrects the language without correcting the conditions that produce and enable that language. In doing so, we lose two battles: the battle for correcting the conditions that produce the need for the language of political correctness, and the battle for creating awareness among those who think that using politically correct language is going to make any meaningful changes.

[From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”
― Louis Yako

“Many DEI officers/professionals I have spoken to over the years have confirmed to me that they don’t feel they have any power to change the structures of the workplaces in which they work. They are given just enough power – along with a fancy job title – to appear as though they are making changes, but once and if they dare to confront real problems, they are often replaced or disciplined by the privileged whites who remain at the top of every institution and organization.

[From "Understanding the DEI Dismantlement” published on Counterpunch on January 31, 2025]”
― Louis Yako

“...while the troubles sweeping Europe and southern Britain comprised liberal and radical elements protesting against powerful elites to secure better rights, in Badenoch it was the opposite - a subtle exercise of power by a small but influential outsider elite seeking to sweep aside the long-established rights of the lower orders, whose mere presence disrupted their leisure pursuits. There was, of course, a measure of protest, but the scattered and impoverished nature of local communities rendered them powerless. Land-owners knew well enough which side their bread was buttered on - a trend that became increasingly evident over the next two decades.”
― David Taylor, 'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863

“Yeah, I did not have DOGE being the center of the Trump administration before January 20, but it certainly has become the center. And, to me, it's revelatory. You get the richest guy in the world cutting off food for the starving children around the world. Like, that's the essence of what it is. The second thing it is, it's cruelty and ruthlessness. I have had so many conversations over the last couple of weeks with people inside federal agencies when the DOGE boys comes to count. And they are naked in their cruelty, that this agency disagrees with Donald Trump, people here, we don't like what you believe, and we're just getting rid of you. And so that cruelty is kind of naked. And, to me, it symbolizes something that is at the epitome of this administration. These DOGE people, Elon Musk, he went to Penn. The DOGE people went to Harvard, they went to Stanford, they worked at McKinsey. These are not populists. These are elitists. These are conservative microelites who've been in elite universities who play in the elite circles and they want to take it out on their fellow elites. And that's what this administration has become about, a battle between elites, not somebody representing the working class for problems that are real.”
― David Brooks