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.
Boom Bang a Bang was a huge part of me, maybe a part that I didnt relish, and there might be psychological reasons for that - I was a child being made to do things I didnt want to do. I was perhaps an elitist, a bit of a snob.
I'm not an elitist. I hate the fashion industry sometimes because it becomes so focused on the elite.
We will never get great art from women if their education exposes them only to the second-rate and if the idea of greatness itself is denied. Greatness is not a white male trick. Every important world civilization has defined its artistic tradition in elitist terms of distinction and excellence.
There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist.
The anti-elitist values in America, I think, are very destructive to education.
Be egalitarian regarding persons. Be elitist regarding ideas.
I thought 'The Artist' was a perfect way to find a good balance. The artistic challenge is obvious because the film is black-and-white and its silent, but I did my best to make the movie accessible and easy to watch. I really don't want to make elitist movies. I really try hard to work for the audience. Audiences are smart. They get everything.
You want people to feel like they belong to something. And not be elitist. You don't want us to be elitist.
I'm straightforward with my kids, I take my kids out and I bring my daughter to dance lessons. I'm teaching my son how to ski, and my wife supports them and my wife has some issues. What, you just dismiss them? You just walk away? I don't walk away from anyone, Bill, in life! I'm sitting here and support people that are down and out! All these rich and elitist people, I'm sick of them! I'm sick of them! No, they're perfect. They don't do nothing! Get outta here! 'They don't do nothing!' They're the biggest crooks around!
I was not a collective person or a bohemian; I was an elitist.
When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Maybe I'm an elitist, but I don't feel like I am.
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.
I think one of the problems the Democrats have today is that they are an elitist party.
In the unexamined American Dream rhetoric promoting mass higher education in the nation of my youth, the implicit vision was that one day everyone, or at least practically everyone, would be a manager or a professional. We would use the most elitist of all means, scholarship, toward the most egalitarian of ends. We would all become chiefs; hardly anyone would be left a mere Indian.
I do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.
I only know what it's like to be an author with social media. I can't compare. I do think we lose the mystery of the author. Today, I get tons of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers, and my goal with Twitter and Facebook is, if someone reaches out to me, I'm going to respond to them. I don't want to be an elitist author who is untouchable. I'm just a regular person, too. I will always respond to everybody.
The educated elite is not without their own actual snobbery. And I kind of an anti-elitist in that regard.
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.
