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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

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Florence King
Age: 80 †
Born: 1936
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: January 6
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Washington
District of Columbia
Florence Virginia King
Common
Fine
Elitist
War
Becomes
Declared
Means
Democracy
Regarding
America
Virtue
Superiority
Mean
Almost
Lowest
Every
Politics
Developed
Touted
Make
Sure
Excellence
Elitism
Love
Point
Sick
Denominator

More quotes by Florence King

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because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.
Florence King
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America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home.
Florence King
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Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it's the opposite of football instead of building character, it tears it down.
Florence King
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It takes only one child to raze a village.
Florence King
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The copyeditor I drew was a brachycephalic, web-footed cretin who should have been in an institution learning how to make brooms.
Florence King
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Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.
Florence King
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In its purest sense, nicknaming is an elitist ritual practiced by those who cherish hierarchy. For preppies it's a smoke signal that allows Bunny to tell Pooky that they belong to the same tribe, while among the good old boys it serves the cause of masculine dominance by identifying Bear and Wrecker as Alpha males.
Florence King
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My object is to live in a place that does not call itself 'the community with a heart.' I want one of those godforsaken towns where all the young people leave and the rest sit on the porch with a rifle across their knees.
Florence King
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Let's bring back grandmothers! A real family consists of three generations. It's time Americans stopped worrying about interference and being a burden on the children and regrouped under one roof.
Florence King
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Familiarity breeds democracry.
Florence King
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Nothing is more likely to start me screaming like a madwoman than New York in February with its piles of blackened snow full of yellow holes drilled by dogs.
Florence King
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Insecurity breeds treachery: if you are kind to people who hate themselves, they will hate you as well.
Florence King
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Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well.
Florence King
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No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street
Florence King
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Gradually my whole concept of time changed until I thought of a month as having twenty-five days of humanness and five others when I might just as well have been an animal in a steel trap.
Florence King
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Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind.
Florence King
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Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
Florence King
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A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.
Florence King
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The proliferation of support groups suggests to me that too many Americans are growing up in homes that do not contain a grandmoth.
Florence King
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to a Southerner it is faux pas, not sins, that matter in this world.
Florence King