People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves “naturally” elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]

The Power Elite, ch. 1 “The Higher Circles,” sec. 4 (1956)
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