“Olympianism, however, is in the interesting position of being a kind of religion which does not recognize itself as such, and indeed claims cognitive superiority to religion in general.”

“To be an Olympian is to be entangled in a complex dialectic involving elitism and egalitarianism. The foundational elitism of the Olympian lies in self-ascribed rationality, generally picked up on an academic campus. Egalitarianism involves a formal adherence to democracy as a rejection of all forms of traditional authority, but with no commitment to taking any serious notice of what the people actually think.”

Olympianism is… “[t]he project of an intellectual elite that believes that it enjoys superior enlightenment and that its business is to spread this benefit to those living on the lower slopes of human achievement.”

Kenneth Minogue