Quotes About Elitist

#1. Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

David Ives

#2. Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

Richard Attenborough

#3. You cannot live your life in the elitist world of fashion and not step out or you're disconnected. You have to realize that fashion is not the endgame.

Andre Leon Talley

#4. 'Elitist' doesn't need to mean wealthy and conservative; it can also mean specialised and rarefied, and that's no bad thing.

Mark Morris

#5. I always wanted the films to play in malls, and I wanted as many people as possible to see them. I never want them to be marginalized in the kind of rarefied, elitist world. I always have hopes that the films will permeate culture in a big way. A lot of times, I'm wrong, but it's always the hope.

Harmony Korine

#6. There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist.

Stephen Malkmus

#7. The mainstream thrust of anti-intellectualism, as it stands today, characterizes thinking itself as an elitist activity.

Maggie Nelson

#8. I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art.

Serj Tankian

#9. If you want to read anything nasty about me, just go to the backpacker websites. There's this kind of elitist branch where they really believe that I had no business going backpacking.

Cheryl Strayed

#10. I miss the reference section at the library. I used to go there twice a week on missions. Now everywhere's a research library and I can't get an elitist kick from it any more.

Douglas Coupland

#11. I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. 'Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting.

Newt Gingrich

#12. To conceive music, to execute it in front of others, to make it so others can do it ... it can be pretty humbling, and kind of scary. So yeah, I don't really feel in competition with anybody. Not because I feel elitist, but because I have enough self-competition. I'm always struggling.

Ryan Adams

#13. To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist.

Florence King

#14. She was an uptight elitist bitch who considered fast food unworthy of being fed to dogs, but when she did something she did it wholeheartedly, with perverse gusto, as if to show she was so far beyond irony she'd circled back to authenticity.

Leah Raeder

#15. In a gallery, there's an expectation of high prices and a somewhat elitist atmosphere.

Will Cotton

#16. The NRA made an ad saying that Obama is elitist because his kids have armed guards. Yeah, that crazy Obama thinking his kids need special protection. I love the NRA accusing anyone of being paranoid. It's like a septic tank saying, 'You need a mint.'

Bill Maher

#17. It is, of course, the first recourse of every elitist to see social barbarism in others.

Graham Joyce

#18. This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

Danny Glover

#19. The Guinness book is a very elitist organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't.

Jack White

#20. To the elitist hedonist, life is the avoidance of boredom and routine.

Timothy Leary

#21. I also think that everyone has an elitist approach to his own art, a complex knowledge of it, whether he is a clockmaker or an engineer. And I think it's perfectly legitimate to make use of this knowledge because it enriches the overall texture of life.

Peter Greenaway

#22. I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.

Lulu

#23. I'm regarded outside New York University as a looney tunes leftie, self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university, I'm regarded as a typical, old-fashioned, white male liberal elitist. I like that. I'm on the edge of both; it makes me feel comfortable.

Tony Judt

#24. Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant.

Judith Martin

#25. There's something quite joyful about doing comedy which doesn't really need much analysis. I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.

Steve Coogan

#26. I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

Ridley Scott

#27. I had a very elitist, snobbish, expensive education in India, and that almost destroyed me.

Bunker Roy

#28. People perceive opera and classical as elitist - I disagree. I've always tried to mix the two, make it more accessible.

Katherine Jenkins

#29. Be egalitarian regarding persons. Be elitist regarding ideas.

Peter Kreeft

#30. Rock is for everybody; it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody's qualified to perform it should never even arise.

Lester Bangs

#31. In contrast, upgrading the healthy is an elitist project, because it rejects the idea of a universal standard applicable to all and seeks to give some individuals an edge over others. People want superior memories, above-average intelligence and first-class sexual abilities.

Yuval Noah Harari

#32. A "racist" thinks themselves better than other races. An "elitist" thinks they are better than everyone.

A.E. Samaan

#33. Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life.

Matthew Fox

#34. I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.

Elia Kazan

#35. I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

Kathryn Bigelow

#36. There is nothing more 'elitist' than thinking our palate
pleasure can ever justify a second of suffering or
a single death. Please go vegan.

Gary L. Francione

#37. I think we could all be a bit more elitist.

Rufus Wainwright

#38. Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

David Cronenberg

#39. People get very trapped where they are. When they hear 'fashion' they get intimidated, particularly at the upper end because it's so elitist.

Vera Wang

#40. For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things.

Shepard Fairey

#41. What's wrong with being elitist if you are trying to encourage people to join the elite rather than being exclusive?

Richard Dawkins

#42. Many outsiders see the art world as elitist and it is, except it is also oddly down-to-earth and embracing of oddballs who don't fit in well anywhere else.

Sarah Thornton

#43. Even the most elitist director or author who claims that he doesn't care if his works are seen or not, then I have to think that he's either a liar or a hypocrite.

Michael Haneke

#44. Gun-control has always been an elitist method of controlling the common ...

Charley Reese

#45. I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.

Twyla Tharp

#46. These are people who consciously choose failure in order to preserve their own sense of integrity. They are more elitist than mere snobs, because of their high standards.

Azar Nafisi

#47. (John F.) Kennedy was an elitist and not a populist. He was enthralled by a certain British aristocratic view of politics in which an enlightened ruling class makes reasoned, rational decisions that are in the interest of the more emotional and easily manipulated masses.

Scott Farris

#48. If you believe that some opinions are in fact better than others, then you, too, are an elitist of sorts.

Michael Harris

#49. The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing.

Beck

#50. Maybe I'm an elitist, but I don't feel like I am.

Kim Deal

#51. I happily cling to my guns and my God, even if President Obama thinks that that is a simpleminded thing in his elitist heart.

Rick Perry

#52. The bias against the show is purely elitist. We're all like the people on the show - the difference is that some of us speak better, or were born richer. There's nothing that happens on my show that rich people don't experience.

Jerry Springer

#53. You want people to feel like they belong to something. And not be elitist. You don't want us to be elitist.

Billie Jean King

#54. For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves.

Michel Onfray

#55. I don't want a president like me! I suck, okay. I want an elitist, smart guy.

Denis Leary

#56. The anti-elitist values in America, I think, are very destructive to education.

Joshua Jackson

#57. The Trevanian Buff is a strange and wonderful creature: an outsider, a natural elitist, not so much a cynic as an idealist mugged by reality, not just one of those who march to a different drummer, but the solo drummer in a parade of one.

Trevanian

#58. The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world.

Eric Pianka

#59. If elitist groups like Bohemian Club, the CFR and the Bilderberg Group select and groom candidates to become Presidents of the US then isn't it safe to assume they also dictate certain policies once their alumni are in the White House?

Lance Morcan

#60. I think one of the problems the Democrats have today is that they are an elitist party.

Ed Gillespie

#61. I feel strong in my belief, based on my widely traveled collaborations, that a one-to-one contact through art contains potent peaceful powers, and is the most non-elitist way to share information, hopefully seducing us into creating mutual understandings for the benefit of all.

Robert Rauschenberg

#62. Labour have been listening for too long to the so-called experts who think that competition is a dirty word and that communicating facts to our children is elitist.

William Hague

#63. Show me an elitist, and I'll show you a loser.

Tom Clancy

#64. Academic Marxists, with their elitist sense of superiority to popular taste, are the biggest snobs in America.

Camille Paglia

#65. September 11th has produced only miniature heroes because our culture has freed itself from many of the old, dangerous, elitist fantasies of heroism ... But in so doing, we have not only tamed and diminished heroes. We have risked taming and diminishing ourselves.

Rory Stewart

#66. In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.

Bryan Caplan

#67. I like the idea of people coming to opera for the first time and finding it an enjoyable experience. I don't like the fact that opera is seen as elitist and all black ties and that stuff.

Rory Bremner

#68. My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it.

Rupert Murdoch

#69. Karma is not elitist.

Aarti Patel

#70. If feminism has receded in visibility and prestige, it is precisely because its vision of life's goals and rewards has become too narrow and elitist.

Camille Paglia

#71. Chloe narrowed her eyes. "Americans are all the same. Arrogant, self-entitled trash. You are evidently no exception." She looked away. "Huh, and here I assumed you had the corner on self-entitlement. Then again, I guess it complements that elitist attitude you've got going on.

Emily Albright

#72. 'Boom Bang a Bang' was a huge part of me, maybe a part that I didn't relish, and there might be psychological reasons for that - I was a child being made to do things I didn't want to do. I was perhaps an elitist, a bit of a snob.

Lulu

#73. I made the decision that, to be happy and to be content, I needed to live the life of an exclusive homosexual. I don't mean an elitist homosexual, but I mean someone who is exclusively pursuing partners of the same gender.

Christopher Rice

#74. Love itself is the most elitist of passions. It acquires its stereoscopic substance and perspective only in the context of culture, for it takes up more place in the mind than it does in bed. Outside of that setting it falls flat into one-dimensional fiction.

Joseph Brodsky

#75. The humanities don't belong to some elitist group ... knowledge as a whole should be embraced.

Ruth Simmons

#76. Some people think that movements, such as the movements in ballet, are a higher cultural expression, whereas some are just dirt. I think it is elitist to think that a trained movement is more acceptable than untrained and possibly unrehearsed movements.

Yoko Ono

#77. I don't want to live in a monoculture of any kind. I don't want to live in a wealthy monoculture, a black monoculture. I don't want to live in an elitist, progressive monoculture.

Richard Benjamin

#78. I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

Alice Waters

#79. When people say stuff like, "Oh, that's soft rock. I don't listen to that," I find that elitist. It's music-racist.

Jay-Z

#80. You make music to move people and you don't get to pick who you move. You just don't. It's exclusionary and elitist and I just never felt that way about music, of all things. The great unifier.

Mark Lanegan

#81. I grew up listening to hits, and if I write something I feel, I think that's pretty mass appeal. I'm not very elitist with music. Love is universal; a great melody is universal; it goes around the world; it's not just American. A great song can touch the world.

Diane Warren

#82. If I had learned how to get along in the quotidian world while keeping up the search for the hidden realm, I might have gotten more out of life. But I believed I was doing hugely important work. I was elitist about it.

Jim Woodring

#83. A major determining factor by which a superior human can be isolated from his average counterparts is his very isolation - the degree to which he naturally removes himself from mass-media input and stimuli. You cannot be an elitist, a Magician, and be plugged into the system.

Anton Szandor LaVey

#84. My tastes in all things lean towards the arty and boring. I like sports documentaries about Scrabble players, bands that play quiet, unassuming music, and TV shows that win awards. In that way, I am an elitist snob.

Michael Ian Black

#85. One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group.

Lesley Garrett

#86. For a writer, New York works well. Literary work is very elitist. I worked two hours a day, maximum, and the time after that was very agreeable. I walked a lot with pleasure. Those two hours augmented the day. I wrote more here than in Paris, an entire chapter of a new novel.

Ismail Kadare

#87. The master demon Screwtape identifies elitist humanity's tendency toward an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men.

C.S. Lewis

#88. Engaging spirits isn't an elitist ability or industry, it's being active in the connection with All Things. It's innate to us all.

S. Kelley Harrell

#89. While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122)

David N. Elkins

#90. The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.

William E. Simon

#91. Every opportunity that comes your way, you can't take lightly. You have to take it very, very seriously, because the opportunities are limited. If you want to keep working, you can't be such an elitist, to say no, that's not good enough, not big enough, not smart enough, whatever.

Chris Klein

#92. It is a love/hate relationship I have with the human race. I am an elitist, and I feel that my responsibility is to drag the human race along with me, that I will never pander to, or speak down to, or play the safe game.

Harlan Ellison

#93. It totally was elitist,' Julia says. 'So? There's nothing wrong with elitist. Some stuff is better than other stuff; pretending it's not doesn't make you open-minded, it just makes you a dick.

Tana French

#94. I hate her skinny thighs and her elitist attitude. i hope she's a dreadful bitch who makes you so miserable that you howl when you remember me.

Charlaine Harris

#95. There is no glory in the sacrificing of oneself in the name of imperialism by order of elitist politicians. But this is what our young service members are led to believe.

Aaron B. Powell

#96. Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd.

Alberto Manguel

#97. I try to make things that are not elitist. There's enough places in the world where we're excluded. I do not ever want to be contributing to that. I want to be contributing to opening the doors and gates for women.

Amanda De Cadenet

#98. There is something wrong with this world." She stood like she was making a speech. "Something very wrong when it's the twenty-first century and this type of elitist travesty is still being perpetuated.

Alex Flinn

#99. Satanism is developing two circles, an elitist group which I always intended my church to be, and the faddists who are becoming Satanists because it's the thing to do.

Anton Szandor LaVey

#100. I'm not an elitist. I hate the fashion industry sometimes because it becomes so focused on the elite.

Nicola Formichetti