Citations:pull the ladder up behind oneself

English citations of pull the ladder up behind oneself

Verb: "(idiomatic) to prevent others from attaining or benefiting from the same advantages, opportunities, or rights as oneself"

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• 1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, page 102:

  Those used to tricking the world by sneaking up into high places for their fun know better than not to pull the ladder up behind them.

• 1965, "Shall We Non-Proliferate?", The Economist, 24 July 1965, page 313:

  The odds are that, after the first flush of enthusiasm, a non-proliferation treaty is going to look to many of the have-nots like a device for letting Russia and America scramble on top of their nuclear piles and then pull the ladder up behind them.

• 1973, Wade Rowland, The Plot to Save the World: The Life and Times of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, page 47:

  Environmental concerns were a neat excuse for the industrialized nations to pull the ladder up behind them.

• 1977, The Journal of Psychohistory, Volume 5, page 423:

  It is my impression that having climbed the ladder of academic acceptability, Professor Mazlish is now attempting to 'pull the ladder up behind him' while the rest of his colleagues are struggling in the difficult waters of psychohistory.

• 1981, Leonard Harris, The Hamptons, page 24:

  Who does not have the temptation to pull the ladder up behind him, once he's climbed up where he wants to be? As if to say, now that I'm here, the place is crowded enough! No room for any more!

• 1987, Naim Attallah, Women, page 514:

  There are other women who make it, and it's as if, once they get up, they want to pull the ladder up behind them to ensure other women don't follow.

• 1994, Tema Frank, Canada's Best Employers for Women: A Guide for Job Hunters, Employees and Employers, page 45:

  Commented one senior administrator, “Early in my career another woman said to me, 'When you get where you're going, don't pull the ladder up behind you.' That is the prevalent attitude here."

• 1996, Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works, page 512:

  "I believe it is wrong for the people who have made it up the ladder to pull the ladder up behind them," he [Tip O'Neill] declared. "If the success stories of this country needed a helping hand up the ladder, why should we not give the same help to those young people trying to get ahead today?"

• 1996, Stephen Tindale & Gerald Holtham, Green Tax Reform: Pollution Payments and Labour Tax Cuts, page 8:

  Tony Crosland, when he was Labour's Environment Secretary, railed against the selfishness of middle class environmentalists who wanted to "pull the ladder up behind them” by stopping some developments or restricting the growth of car ownership and use.

• 2009, Anna Bryson, No Coward Soul: A Biography of Thekla Beere, page XVI:

  Reaching the top, Beere did not pull the ladder up behind her.

• 2011, Jonathan J. Cavallero, Hollywood's Italian American Filmmakers: Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino, page 162:

  Baccalieri's desire to essentially pull the ladder up behind him is indicative of a larger trend within American culture that is neither foreign nor specific to the descendants of Italian immigrants.

• 2013, Devon W. Carbado & Mitu Gulati, Acting White?: Rethinking Race in "Post-Racial" America, page 165:

  Incentives exist for minorities to get to the top of the corporation and pull the ladder up behind them when they get there.

• 2013, Rupa Huq, Making Sense of Suburbia Through Pop Culture, page 168:

  This sketch suggests that preservation of suburban racial purity applies as much to these Asian suburbanites as it does to more 'standard' white residents of suburbia – as long as they can pull the ladder up behind them after getting in themselves.

• 2013, Graham Joyce, The Year of the Ladybird, unnumbered page:

  Yes, he was a working man made good but he was the kind who wants to pull the ladder up behind him so that no one else from a similar background can make good.

• 2013, James Tooley, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into how the World's Poorest People are Educating Themselves, page 199:

  An elderly Indian professor, more kindly than the others, nevertheless had disagreed with all I'd said: "You're trying to pull the ladder up behind you," he smiled, "the only way your country developed was through free government schools. Why are you trying to deny it to the rest of us?"

• 2015, Jo Spain, With Our Blessing, unnumbered page:

  In her experience, there was a type of professional woman who liked to pull the ladder up behind her once she'd climbed it.

• 2016, Giles Sparrow, The Stargazer's Handbook, unnumbered page:

  The first generations of stars to form in any nebula have a natural advantage when it comes to gaining material, and also pull the ladder up behind them, depriving later stellar generations of available material.

• 2017, Catríona Perry, In America: Tales from Trump Country, unnumbered page:

  It's a phenomenon that was witnessed in Boston and New York when the first wave of Irish immigrants arrived in the late nineteenth century too. And that is a propensity to pull the ladder up behind them.

• 2019, Arthur M. Diamond, Jr., Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism, page 118:

  But Rogge urged us to be vigilant against the formerly little big guy who wants to pull the ladder up behind her as soon as she herself has finished the climb.

• 2019, David McCourt, Total Rethink: Why Entrepreneurs Should Act Like Revolutionaries, page 176:

  There is always a temptation to pull the ladder up behind you once you have climbed to the top, but it is a temptation that everyone should resist because it inevitably leads to calcification and death.

• 2021, Sarah Jaffe, Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, unnumbered page:

  That sense of middle-class scarcity can lead at all levels to wanting to pull the ladder up behind you, whether that be the tenured professor ignoring the struggles of the adjunct down the hall, or the graduate student breaking the strike, or the adjuncts themselves casting aspersions on "those" workers.

• 2021, Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, page 44:

  Among the very people who benefited the most from the largely whites-only free college model and who now want to pull the ladder up behind them: older, college-educated (white) Republicans.

• 2021, Harriet Minter, WFH (Working From Home): How to Build a Career You Love when You're Not in the Office, unnumbered page:

  Secondly, if you're managing a team that now wants to work from home, make sure you don't pull the ladder up behind you.

• 2021, Supriya Vani & Carl A. Harte, Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy, unnumbered page:

  Using another metaphor, why would a successful woman, whose climb to positions of power has been fraught with challenges far beyond those of her male colleagues, try to pull the ladder up behind her?