Upper Echelon Quotes

The insistence is on merit, insinuating that any current majority white leadership in any industry has got there through hard work and no outside help, as if whiteness isn’t its own leg-up, as if it doesn’t imply a familiarity that warms an interviewer to a candidate. When each of the sectors I mentioned earlier have such dire racial representation, you’d have to be fooling yourself if you really think that the homogeneous glut of middle-aged white men currently clogging the upper echelons of most professions got there purely through talent alone. We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance.

The trouble with entering the upper echelon is you have to work harder to stay there.

By 1770, fewer than 10 percent of white Virginians laid claim to over half the land in the colony; a small upper echelon of large planters each owned slaves in the hundreds. More than half of white men owned no land at all, working as tenants or hired laborers, or contracted as servants.

The common denominator in all these conditions—whether in the lungs, the muscles, or the bones—is overwhelming pain. And that is perhaps the first and most fundamental thing that all novice oarsmen must learn about competitive rowing in the upper echelons of the sport: that pain is part and parcel of the deal. It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.

One of the most intricate Cold War spy novels I’ve ever read is David Quammen’s The Soul of Viktor Tronko, based on the real-life case of a Cold War–era Russian defector who tells his debriefers that a Russian agent has infiltrated the upper echelons of the CIA.

This, fundamentally, is philanthrocapitalism in action: introducing policies that help concentrate wealth in the upper echelons of society in the hope that the wealthy will donate to the financially strapped rest.

I’ve always figured that people in the upper echelon of beauty—sans Mason—were incapable of doing the ridiculous things that semi-attractive people like myself do; like fart or burp in front of others, smell or have stinky shit.

the upper echelon of adventure sport athletes are grappling with the fundamental properties of the universe: gravity, velocity and sanity. They’re toying with them, cheating death, refusing to accept there might be limits to what they can accomplish.

The insistence is on merit, insinuating that any current majority white leadership in any industry has got there through hard work and no outside help, as if whiteness isn’t its own leg-up, as if it doesn’t imply a familiarity that warms an interviewer to a candidate. When each of the sectors I mentioned earlier have such dire racial representation, you’d have to be fooling yourself if you really think that the homogeneous glut of middle-aged white men currently clogging the upper echelons of most professions got there purely through talent alone. We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance. Opposing positive discrimination based on apprehensions about getting the best person for the job means inadvertently revealing what you think talent looks like, and the kind of person in which you think talent resides. Because if the current system worked correctly, and if hiring practices were successfully recruiting and promoting the right people for the right jobs in all circumstances, I seriously doubt that so many leadership positions would be occupied by white middle-aged men.

[...] you'd have to be fooling yourself if you really think that the homogeneous glut of middle-aged white men currently clogging the upper echelons of most professions got there purely through talent alone. We don't live in a meritocracy and to present that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise of wilful ignorance.

I will say this about the upper echelon in France: they know how to spend money. From what I saw living in America, wealth is dedicated to elevating the individual experience. If you’re a well-off child, you get a car, or a horse. You go to summer camps that cost as much as college. And everything is monogrammed, personalized, and stamped, to make it that much easier for other people to recognize your net worth. …The French bourgeois don’t pine for yachts or garages with multiple cars. They don’t build homes with bowling alleys or spend their weekends trying to meet the quarterly food and beverage limit at their country clubs: they put their savings into a vacation home that all their family can enjoy, and usually it’s in France. They buy nice food, they serve nice wine, and they wear the same cashmere sweaters over and over for years. I think the wealthy French feel comfortable with their money because they do not fear it. It’s the fearful who put money into houses with even bedrooms and fifteen baths. It’s the fearful who drive around in yellow Hummers during high-gas-price months becasue if they’re going to lose their money tomorrow, at least other people will know that they are rich today. The French, as with almost all things, privilege privacy and subtlety and they don’t feel comfortable with excess. This is why one of their favorite admonishments is tu t’es laisse aller. You’ve lost control of yourself. You’ve let yourself go.

From the perspective of sixties radicals, who regularly watched antiwar demonstrations attacked by nationalist teamsters and construction workers, the reactionary implications of corporatism appeared self-evident. The corporate suits and the well-paid, Archie Bunker elements of the industrial proletariat were clearly on the same side. Unsurprising then that the left-wing critique of bureaucracy at the time focused on the ways that social democracy had more in common with fascism than its proponents cared to admit. Unsurprising, too, that this critique seems utterly irrelevant today.* What began to happen in the seventies, and paved the way for what we see today, was a kind of strategic pivot of the upper echelons of U.S. corporate bureaucracy—away from the workers, and towards shareholders, and eventually, towards the financial structure as a whole. __________ *Though it is notable that it is precisely this sixties radical equation of communism, fascism, and the bureaucratic welfare state that has been taken up by right-wing populists in America today. The internet is rife with such rhetoric. One need only consider the way that 'Obamacare' is continually equated with socialism and Nazism, often both at the same time.

The regime created an instant pool of such women by the simple tactic of declaring all second marriages and nonmarital liaisons adulterous, arresting the female partners, and, on the grounds that they were morally unfit, confiscating the children they already had, who were adopted by childless couples of the upper echelons who were eager for progeny by any means. (In the middle period, this policy was extended to cover all marriages not contracted within the state church.)

Bobby wrote, “the Big Tech, Big Data, Big Pharma, Big Carbon and Chemical-Industrial Food plutocrats and their allies in the Military Industrial Complex and Intelligence Apparatus now control our government. These plutocrats have twisted the language of democracy, equity and free markets to transform our exemplary democracy into a corrupt system of corporate crony capitalism. The tragic outcome for America has been a cushy socialism for the rich and a savage and bloody free market for the poor. America has devolved into a corporate kleptocracy addicted to a war economy abroad and a security and surveillance state at home. The upper echelons of the Democratic Party are now pro-censorship, pro-war neocons who wear woke bobbleheads to disguise and soften their belligerent totalitarian agendas for our country and the world.

Fuckboys (and Fuckboy Prospects), read this closely: When a woman breaks up with you (usually because she is fed up with your shit) it’s never easy. I understand your ego is bruised, you can’t imagine another dude doing things you used to do with/to her and that shit will eat you up! I understand. That doesn’t mean you should disrespect her – or kill her goddamit! That doesn’t mean you should post revenge porn pictures and videos of her to your 5000 online friends. It does not justify you calling her a hoe to ease your lil battered ego. Doing any of those makes you a certified upper echelon fuckboy bro. Walk away – just go on airplane mode, remove yourself from the situation and allow yourself to heal. If you are one of those social-media love butterflies who advertises every moment with your boo, then log out of all your profiles and go into cocoon mode.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written by Christie in 1926, is perhaps the most quintessential golden-age murder mystery ever written in absolutely every way—except one. But it is this one spectacular difference that sets it apart from other books of the era and that catapulted Agatha Christie into the upper echelons of the genre. In fact, as the ending was so unorthodox and apparently broke the rules of the Detection Club’s oath—tongue-in-cheek though they were—there was a movement to expel Christie from the club entirely! Only a vote by fellow female crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers saved her. If this doesn’t make you intrigued to read the book, you don’t need to just take my word for it—in 2013, nearly ninety years after its publication, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever, calling it “the finest example of the genre ever penned.” It features typical golden-era elements within the text, like a floor plan of all the rooms of the house and heavily buried clues, and I’m of the opinion that the only way to do this particular book justice is to read it. Don’t watch an adaptation, don’t listen to an audiobook, and don’t use an e-reading device and deny yourself the pleasure of the rustling pages peppered with nuance. Buy a copy of the book and read it. It’s the only way you can read between the lines of this clever tale.

In the upper echelons of the Church, the authoritarian and anti-liberal elements within fascism resonated with those – and they included Pius XI – who had come to see the turmoil and conflict that had convulsed the world in recent decades as symptoms of the deep moral malaise that had afflicted Western society since the time of the Enlightenment, with its corrosive doctrines of rights and popular sovereignty.

withdrew, chasing her mouth and muttering, “How so?” “Before we start worrying about your boyfriends at the club or the upper echelon of society in town, why don’t we go on a date?

Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.

But I’d guess that at least one thing an automaton lacks is empathy; if you can’t feel, you can’t really relate to something that does, even if you act as though you do. Which makes it interesting to note how many sociopaths show up in the world’s upper echelons, hmm? How ruthlessness and bottom-line self-interest are so lauded up in the stratosphere, while anyone showing those traits at ground level gets carted off into detention with the Realists. Almost as if society itself is being reshaped from the inside out.” “Oh, come on. Society was always pretty— Wait, you’re saying the world’s corporate elite are nonsentient?

What are the most efficient ways to build new mental models? Read a lot—just read. [2] Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.

The atmosphere in the upper echelons of the Treasury tended to stifle debate. It was an insular world, populated by clever insiders. Officials were not encouraged to think the unthinkable; instead their judgements tended to be mutually reinforcing. As one explained, “There was nothing to be gained by rocking the boat.

Reading science, math, and philosophy one hour per day will likely put you at the upper echelon of human success within seven years.

I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never live in the upper echelon of society

In fact, the upper echelons of poets and nekomancers have both decreed that Ogolath is off-limits to all—not just cats, but any kindred, on pain of imprisonment or maiming. The very sort of decree, of course, that entices the curious and the intrepid.

I am flawed on many obvious levels, and truthfully, I erroneously report my zip code at least two out of every ten times. So why would I write about pursuing a rich understanding of the Bible? Isn’t that material reserved for the upper echelon of the church hierarchy? The ones who have “arrived”? The answer is fundamental: The insights of the Bible are not reserved for pastors, their wives, and Billy Graham. Psalm 119:130, one of the most beautiful passages concerning God’s Word, says, The unfolding of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.

Within the upper echelons of the agency, The Purge had been felt a necessary emergency measure: better to remain a stripped-down core than be packed up entirely. Had they not brushed the worst horrors under the carpet, so the reasoning went, several of them might have been disgraced, or even imprisoned.

Who’s they?” Ozzie asked. The guy’s wild blond hair and Star Trek T-shirt—it read I beat the Kobayashi Maru—shouted of his secure position in the upper echelons of Geekdom as loudly as the three microsized laptops open in front of him. “Official

Billions of dollars of US aid were at stake, and regardless of Carter’s avowals, entrenched geopolitics prevailed. Cold War orthodoxies were sacrosanct. In July 1979, left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua overthrew the dictator Anastasio Somoza, a US ally. Officials in the upper echelons of the State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department wondered whether El Salvador might fall next. The view in Washington was that the military needed American support for the center to hold in El Salvador.

For a moment, Poldo’s mind flashed back to when he was a young boy in his family workshop, when his father had sat him down and told him that if nothing else, he could take pride in being a good person. Since then, he’d discovered that being a good person was the last resort of self-esteem. In the upper echelons of Andarun’s financial industry, people prided themselves on the name of the firm they worked for, the size of the deals they closed, the title on their business card, and anything else that could be quickly boiled down to a sum of gold. With so much to take pride in beyond integrity, many bankers put little stock in it.

Quiet as it's kept, there is a certain type of "upper class" white folks who don't use "colored help" at all. In fact, household labor is a segregated occupation. A Lancashire-born (English) butler, asked if he had encountered many black men and women in his 20 years of service, said reflectively, "I can't think of one I worked with. On one job we had Italian cook, an Irish kitchen man, a French lady's maid, an English butler, and an English parlormaid." The upper echelon's household staff is 99-99/100% white.

How could he not want more of her? How could she believe that he’d leave her alone? “Are you trying to draw attention to us?” he asked, pulling her into him. Those blue-green eyes narrowed at him. “We’re on the dance floor. So dance.” She glanced around them and seemed to notice for the first time that they were surrounded by the upper echelon of California royalty. Aiden recognized a few faces here and there. A half dozen politicians, a handful of celebrities, but mostly it was a collection of heirs and heiresses to various fortunes who had clearly had more than enough to drink. “What’s wrong with these people?” Frankie asked, allowing Aiden to draw her further onto the dance floor. Even the band was trashed, judging by the limping tempo to their song. “Oh, my god. Is that Meltdown?

Douglas MacGregor, a retired colonel who regularly spreads pro-Putin propaganda on American airwaves, was named senior adviser to the secretary of defense. Trump had nominated MacGregor to be US ambassador to Germany a few months earlier, but MacGregor failed to win confirmation. Now he was installed in the upper echelons of the Pentagon.

A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman competing at the highest levels must be able to take in and consume as much as eight liters of oxygen per minute; an average male is capable of taking in roughly four to five liters at most. Pound for pound, Olympic oarsmen may take in and process as much oxygen as a thoroughbred racehorse. This extraordinary rate of oxygen intake is of only so much value, it should be noted. While 75–80 percent of the energy a rower produces in a two-thousand-meter race is aerobic energy fueled by oxygen, races always begin, and usually end, with hard sprints. These sprints require levels of energy production that far exceed the body’s capacity to produce aerobic energy, regardless of oxygen intake. Instead the body must immediately produce anaerobic energy. This, in turn, produces large quantities of lactic acid, and that acid rapidly builds up in the tissue of the muscles. The consequence is that the muscles often begin to scream in agony almost from the outset of a race and continue screaming until the very end. And it’s not only the muscles that scream. The skeletal system to which all those muscles are attached also undergoes tremendous strains and stresses. Without proper training and conditioning—and sometimes even with them—competitive rowers are apt to experience a wide variety of ills in the knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, ribs, neck, and above all the spine. These injuries and complaints range from blisters to severe tendonitis, bursitis, slipped vertebrae, rotator cuff dysfunction, and stress fractures, particularly fractures of the ribs. The common denominator in all these conditions—whether in the lungs, the muscles, or the bones—is overwhelming pain. And that is perhaps the first and most fundamental thing that all novice oarsmen must learn about competitive rowing in the upper echelons of the sport: that pain is part and parcel of the deal. It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.

And the fact that Paul’s letters to individuals were circulated and canonized means that they were not meant to be private correspondences for the upper echelon of leadership alone.

I’m just saying I’d give you the world if you wanted it, that I’d never let anything happen to you. We’re a force on our own, mami, but together? We’d take the world by fucking storm.

Here was where this Nought truly lived. Quath had sensed its raw, sticky pull in a jolting instant of profound surprise. The mind’s upper layers were mild and obliging, like cool, smooth corridors beneath the linear engagements of the conscious—while far below, in chambers walled and ramified with bony purpose, lurked a complex, ropy labyrinth of strange power. Or minds. Quath was not even sure the Nought was a single intelligence. Its highest echelons had seemed to be more like a passive stage than a directing entity. There, on a broad, level area above the syrupy seethe, factions of the undermind warred. An abyss yawned. Instincts spoke quietly, effectively, never falling silent. Emotions flared prickly hot—heckling, yearning, always calling the higher intelligence away from its deliberations. Zesty hormones surged—not to carry wedges of information or holistic images, as in Quath, but to flood the bloodstream with urgent demands. Organs far from the brain answered these chemical heralds, pumping other hormones into the thumping flow, adding alkaline voices to the babble. Ideas rose like crystalline towers from this swamp, glimmering coolly—but soon were spattered with the aromatic chemical murk, blood on glass. These elements merged and wrestled, struggling armies rushing together in flurries, fermenting, spinning away into wild skirmishes. Lurid splashes festooned the brittle ramparts of analytical thought. A churning mire lapped hungrily at the stern bulwarks of reason, eroding worn salients even as fresh ones were built. Yet somehow this interior battle did not yield mere confusion and scattered indecision. Somehow a single coherent view emerged, holding the vital, fervent factions in check. Its actions sampled of all the myriad influences, letting none dominate for long. Quath marveled at the sheer energy behind the incessant clashings, and at the same time felt a mixture of recognition laced by repulsion. This Nought’s inner landscape was far more complex than it should be. No wonder it had not attained the technological sophistication of the podia!—it labored forward in a howling storm, its every sharp perception blunted by fraying winds of passion.

The insistence is on merit, insinuating that any current majority white leadership in any industry has got there through hard work and no outside help, as if whiteness isn’t its own leg-up, as if it doesn’t imply a familiarity that warms an interviewer to a candidate. When each of the sectors I mentioned earlier have such dire racial representation, you’d have to be fooling yourself if you really think that the homogeneous glut of middle-aged white men currently clogging the upper echelons of most professions got there purely through talent alone. We don’t live in a meritocracy, and to pretend that simple hard work will elevate all to success is an exercise in wilful ignorance

Yet here the pilots were in England, fêted and pampered by the upper echelons of society, glamorized in movies and the press, enjoying themselves in spite of any guilt they may have felt. And here were their hosts and hostesses, with their very British insouciance, acting as if there would always be an England. In one context, this attitude was infuriating; in another, it was one of Britain’s greatest strengths.

Nonetheless, Braudel’s definitional opposition of capitalism and market economy is misleading. Even in the early modern era, and even in its “upper echelon,” the kind of capitalism taking shape was characterized by a great deal of competition, profit and loss, rise and fall, opportunity and risk. It was rooted in the market economy and, as a rule, contributed not to the elimination of markets but to their becoming more universal. Essentially, this remains true to this day.

Most of us simply do not possess the innate abilities necessary to ascend to the upper echelons of athletic, artistic, or musical excellence. But *all* of us, as human beings, do possess the innate abilities necessary to achieve excellence of ethical character --- excellence in the sense of improving our personal character to the point where we can do right and good things naturally and consistently.

In the field of speculative fiction, helping out the tyros is a dues-paying activity held in only slightly less esteem than that of making money. I know of no other genre in which the established names—from the Asimovian/Bradburyian/Clarkesque upper echelons all the way down to last year’s newcomers—break their asses with such regularity and effusiveness, to assist the fledglings. Show me, if you can, another field of free-lance endeavor in which the fastest guns teach the plowboys how to outdraw them.

we often condemn bearers of bad news, since we automatically associate them with the message’s content (otherwise known as shoot-the-messenger syndrome). Sometimes, CEOs and investors (unconsciously) steer clear of these harbingers, meaning the only news that reaches the upper echelons is positive, thus creating a distorted view of the real situation. If you lead a group of people, and don’t want to fall prey to false connections, direct your staff to tell you only the bad news – and fast. With this, you overcompensate for the shoot-the-messenger syndrome and, believe me, you will still hear enough positive news.

Blue wasn't exactly a rookie, not any longer anyway. He'd had a phenomenal season the previous year that had him nin the upper echelon of NHL stat charts: 60 goals, 30 assists and a gritty, tough-as-shit work ethic.

What’s more, members of Stan’s inner circle say JC lost all control in this stretch of time, allegedly going so far as to physically attack her parents. And yet, in a stunning contrast, while Stan became mired in the grime of his private world, his public image shone brighter than ever. As the Marvel brand ascended—first gradually, then rapidly—to the heights Stan had dreamed of, he was allowed to bask in its reflected glory, his face plastered on the big screen in cameo appearances that made him recognizable around the globe and swiftly solidified his status as a cultural icon of the upper echelons.

Up to very recent times, there was a definitive anti-Semitic undercurrent amongst the upper and middle classes in England. They may have courted the rich Jewish banker or merchant, but looked down on him with disdain. Barring a Jew from one’s club by black-balling him was the norm. These feelings were even stronger in the upper echelons of the Army. Not to mention the Navy!

As seen from the combat soldier's perspective, the distant gods are the rear-echelon higher officers and civilian political authorities who control an army and (along with the enemy) are the soldier's de facto masters and captors. They have truly godlike power over soldiers in combat. Rear-echelon authorities were known universally among Vietnam combat veterans as REMFS (pronounced as a word, the "m" formed with the lower lip against the upper teeth, often accompanied by a curl of the upper lip), an acronym for "rear-echelon motherfuckers.

Of course, many have predicted the bursting of China’s bubble before, and have been proven wrong. The Chinese Politburo is more resourceful than its critics give it credit for, and well aware in its upper echelons of the need for certain vital reforms. The speed of China’s industrialization is unique, and with no real historical precedents it is very hard to predict how it will unfold.

There was, though, a sharp divide between classical and pop in the upper echelons; although the pop releases were subsidising the classical recordings, the staff who created them were treated like other ranks by the top brass. The chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, must take a lot of credit for bringing down this antiquated hierarchy. To put things in context, two years before he joined EMI, the board had decided there was ‘no future’ in the long-playing record.