The American Ruling Class (2005)

Hodding Carter III - Fmr. State Dept. Spokesman : There is something fatally attractive about joining the ruling class, starting of course with the pay, but also with the prestige and the like. But fatally ought to go with attractive, in many cases, because it means for a large part you're getting ready to forget about half of what you learned at Yale or anywhere else, that there are obligations in this democratic republic which I still, perhaps naively, believe need to be factored in. I do not actually believe that society is best served by everybody running avidly after their own self interest. I particularly think: that it is betrayal when the best and the brightest decide that their being the best and the brightest means that they jump on the gravy train and tell everybody else kiss mine as I leave the room. If there is no last morality here to be offered, it is an individual question. The last thing people always say as they go out is not 'I wish I had had more money.' They're usually wishing something else, about what they did with their lives.

Hodding Carter III: Self - Fmr. State Dept. Spokesman