Aristocracy Quotes - Page 7

• I don't believe any more in democracy. But I can't believe in the old sort of aristocracy, either, nor can I wish it back, splendid as it was. What I believe in is the old Homeric aristocracy, when the grandeur was inside a man, and he lived in a simple wooden house.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Believe, Simple, Men

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• Brave people add up to an aristocracy. The democracy of thou-shalt-not is bound to be a collection of weak men.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Men, Weak Man, People

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.8467, Delphi Classics

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• Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

  John Adams

  Suicide, Selfish, Passion

  Letter to John Taylor, 15 Apr. 1814

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• As to the Income Tax, my opinion is that the needful revenue would be fairly and most fairly raised if paid by property, and by individuals in proportion to their property. A Property Tax should be an assessment upon all land and buildings, and canals and railroads, but not on property such as machinery, stock in trade, etc. The aristocracy have squeezed all they can out of the mass of the consumers, and now they lay their daring hands on those not wholly impoverished.

  John Bright

  Assessment, Hands, Land

  Letter to his sister Margaret, 1842. "The Life Of John Bright". Book by G. M. Trevelyan, pp. 72-73, 1913.

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• I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

  Caitlin Moran

  Class, Campaigns, Want

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• Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

  John Updike

  Marriage, Teacher, Literature

  John Updike (2012). “Couples: A Novel”, p.72, Random House

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• Anyone's blood can become blue for a lump sum down.

  Nancy Astor

  Blue, Blood, Lumps

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• London is a good fashion city. They're a little more daring. There's the element of the aristocracy, which is always interesting.

  John Legend

  Fashion, Cities, Interesting

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• All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Civilization, People, Intellectual

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• In France those absurd perversions of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of chivalry were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery and undisciplined aristocracy which imagined itself to be the most efficient military force in the world, but which was in reality little removed from an armed mob.

  Charles William Chadwick Oman

  Country, Art, Military

  Charles Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman (1924). “A history of the art of war in the middle ages”

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• Creating senates, the French critics said, implied that there was another social order besides the people represented in the houses of representatives. [John] Adams actually agreed with that implication and argued that the aristocracy and the people had to have separate houses; this was the only way the power of the aristocracy could be contained.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Order, Creating, People

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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• This rationale, which justified the mixed constitution of Great Britain, might have made some sense in 1776, but by 1787 most American thinkers had come to believe that all parts of their balanced governments represented in one way or another the sovereign people. They had left the Aristotelian idea of mixed estates - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy - way behind. [John] Adams had not, and his stubbornness on this point caused him no end of trouble.

  Gordon S. Wood

  Believe, Government, Ideas

  Source: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

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• Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Kings, Book, Common Sense

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “The Illustrated Walden: Thoreau Bicentennial Edition”, p.107, Penguin

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• Unlike the male codfish which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Eye, Son, Parent

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• This old aristocracy and Church-ridden, and tradition-ridden country will never grow wiser. Whilst we are fighting for supremacy in Europe, the [United] States are working, and not fighting for it, but winning it all over the world.

  John Bright

  Country, Fighting, Winning

  Letter to Cobden on December 30, 1853. "The Life Of John Bright". Book by G. M. Trevelyan, p. 230, 1913.

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• Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.

  Camille Paglia

  Weakness, World, Standards

  "How Capitalism Can Save Art" by Camille Paglia, www.wsj.com. October 05, 2012.

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• I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

  John Adams

  Running, Democracies Have, Long

  John Adams (2001). “The Political Writings of John Adams”, p.405, Regnery Publishing

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• I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.You could claim that it's due to my military experience. But it came before that. I love their freedom of behavior. They're not constrained by penal attitudes, puritanical attitudes about behavior, both socially and morally. They have a freedom that I admire. An unquestioned freedom.

  James Salter

  Attitude, Military, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.

  Karl Marx

  Revenge, Class, Sight

  Karl Marx, Frederick Engels (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.36, Haymarket Books

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• ‎A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

  John Stuart Mill

  Education, Successful, Government

  John Stuart Mill (1978). “On Liberty”, Penguin Books

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• Say what you will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I'll bet Trotsky couldn't hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Moving, Dark, Night

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• Bohemia is a commune in which the Revolution is over and everyone is a member of the aristocracy

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Revolution, Members, Communes

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• But, you know, we have these entrenched entities - and I'm talking about both Republicans and Democrats - who believe that when you're elected to office, you become some kind of member of the aristocracy, and that anyone who challenges you is attacking you and is unpatriotic. This is foolishness.

  Benjamin Carson

  Believe, Talking, Office

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• What a terrible thing to be a great lord, yet a wicked man.

  Moliere

  Men, Wicked, Lord

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• Piety, like nobility, has its aristocracy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nobility, Piety

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Peter Eckermann (2014). “Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann”, p.82, Ravenio Books

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