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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