I believe in aristocracy,

[cali]

though- if that is the right word and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet......

E.M. Forester

and another from Forester:

I do not believe in Belief. But this is an age of faith, and there are so many militant creeds that in self-defense, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in world which is rent by religious and racial persecution, in a world where ignorance rules, and science, who ought to have ruled, plays the subservient pimp......

Both of these quotes are from 1939 essay entitled "What I Believe", and are from the book "Two Cheers For Democracy".

I find them as apropos now as when they were written.