Aristocracy Quotes - Page 5

• In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.

  Celia Green

  People, Democracy, Way

  Celia Elizabeth Green (1976). “The decline and fall of science”, Hamish Hamilton

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• Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

  Lord Acton

  Numbers, Democracy, Oligarchy

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.42, Jazzybee Verlag

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• laughter, that distinctively human emotion, laughter which springs from trust in the other, from willingness to put oneself momentarily in the other's place, even at one's own expense, is the special emotional basis of democratic procedures, just as pride is the emotion of an aristocracy, shame of a crowd that rules, and fear of a police state.

  Margaret Mead

  Laughter, Spring, Pride

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• A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Government, Long, Democracy

  Josiah Ablett, Walter Savage Landor (1837). “Literary Hours”, p.87

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• there is no aristocracy of grief. Grief is a great leveler.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Grief

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1973). “Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Class, Land, Talent

  Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865.

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• It was a JOB; the video show was a JOB; you don't tell the Aristocrats joke at 8 o'clock at night on network tv, it would be funny though. But those guys know I like dirty stuff, I like clean stuff too.

  Bob Saget

  Jobs, Dirty, Night

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence.

  Aristotle

  Men, Excellence, Noble

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• Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.

  Ayn Rand

  Equality, Men, Law

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.119, Penguin

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• Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

  Aristotle

  Kings, Names, Government

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.299, Simon and Schuster

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• Democracy has two excesses to avoid: the spirit of inequality, which leads to an aristocracy, or to the government of a single individual; and the spirit of extreme equality, which conducts it to despotism, as the despotism of a single individual finishes by conquest.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Wisdom, Democracies Have, Government

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• An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Government, Politics

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• It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or consuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome.

  Robert Bellarmine

  Wisdom, Kings, Rome

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• Recognising that an ostentatious cult of heroism and state service served an important propaganda function for the British elite does not mean, of course, that we should dismiss it as artificial or insincere. All aristocracies have a strong military tradition, and for many British patricians the protracted warfare of the period was a godsend. It gave them a job, and, more important, a purpose, an opportunity to carry out what they had been trained to do since childhood: ride horses, fire guns, exercise their undoubted physical courage and tell other people what to do.

  Linda Colley

  Strong, Horse, Jobs

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• Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success.

  James F. Cooper

  Powerful, Men, Class

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• The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

  Aristotle

  Government, Democracy, Oligarchy

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.91, Aristotle

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• I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

  Henry George

  Powerful, Self, Envy

  Henry George (1884). “Social Problems”

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• In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.

  Linda Colley

  Country, Men, Ideas

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.177, Yale University Press

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• Virginia was in fact a landowning aristocracy, without nobility or merchant class, or any considerable small peasant farming class; and the other Southern colonies, except North Carolina, were on the whole similar to Virginia in these respects.

  Carl L. Becker

  Virginia, Class, Southern

  "Search Results The United States: An Experiment in Democracy". Book by Carl L. Becker, 1920.

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• Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream.

  William Winwood Reade

  Christian, Dream, Spiritual

  William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.533

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• The strength and vitality of an empire is frequently due to the new aristocracy from the periphery.

  Ronald Syme

  Vitality, Empires, British History

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• Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life.

  Margaret Mead

  Past, Opportunity, Equality

  Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

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• The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity.

  Aristotle

  Numbers, Political, Democracy

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• Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.

  Carl Sagan

  Earth, Monkeys, Apes

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• Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of the federal government by the agrarian masses led by an aristocracy of slave-owning masses.

  Charles A. Beard

  Government, Political, Democracy

  Charles A. Beard (2017). “Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy: How Hamilton's Merchant Class Lost Out to the Agrarian South”, p.9, Courier Dover Publications

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