Constitutional Monarchy Quotes

• The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

  Walter Bagehot

  Kings, Rights, Three

  The English Constitution "The Monarchy (continued)" (1867)

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• The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

  Walter Bagehot

  Strong, Government, Political

  The English Constitution "The Monarchy" (1867)

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• Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

  C. S. Lewis

  Spiritual, Kings, Stars

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• Royalty is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions.

  Walter Bagehot

  Government, Kings And Queens, Interesting

  'The English Constitution' (1867) 'The Monarchy'

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• A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.

  James F. Cooper

  Power, Government, Intimidating

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• One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

  Walter Bagehot

  Art, Pain, Philosophy

  'Physics and Politics' (1872) 'The Age of Discussion'

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• Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.

  Edward Gibbon

  Government, History, British Monarchy

  Edward Gibbon (1821). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.197

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• A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy - "A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

  Benjamin Franklin

  Doctors, Republic, Drs

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• Monarchy can easily be "debunked," but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.

  C. S. Lewis

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Stars

  "Equality". The Spectator, Volume CLXXI, archive.spectator.co.uk. August 27, 1943.

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• Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution.

  Adam Gopnik

  Hangover, Believe, Reality

  The New Yorker, September 29, 1997.

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• A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.

  Walter Bagehot

  Marriage, Facts, Brilliant

  Walter Bagehot (1872). “The English Constitution ... Reprinted from the"Fortnightly Review."”, p.38

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• Can we say that the constitutional monarchies in Spain, Belgium or England are democratic? Those with superior chambers like the House of Lords in England, that still represent the English feudal nobility in terms of positions above regional representatives, who are in the end the representatives supposedly elected by the population. Many mechanisms exist, but they are mechanisms to preserve the power of the wealthy classes, of the bourgeois classes that hold the power and rights above the rest of the society.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Class, Rights, House

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?

  Slavoj Žižek

  Kings, Decision, Democracy

  Slavoj Žižek (2009). “First As Tragedy, Then As Farce”, p.134, Verso

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• Louis XVI started to die on June 21st 1791. For his flight tore away the veil of that false constitutional monarchy, and once more confronted the Patriot party with the whole problem of the revolution's future.

  Francois Furet

  Party, June, Revolution

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• To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Crush, Real, Years

  Vladimir Lenin (2017). “The State And Revolution (Annotated)”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchy and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty.

  Ruhollah Khomeini

  Islamic, Differences, Government

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• It’s unlikely to change – there’s nothing in King Salman’s past as governor of Riyadh for about forty years that suggests that he was particularly a reformer, not on the role of women, not on democratic development. There’s been a rumor in the last couple of days that he said to someone in an e-mail that he’s in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but I would be surprised if the level of repression started to go down … I think the kind of thing that we would view as significant reforms is unlikely.

  Elliott Abrams

  Kings, Couple, Thinking

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• Of all the memorable phrases that have been minted and mobilised to describe modern British royalty, 'constitutional monarchy' is virtually the only one which seemes to have neither been anticipated nor invented by Walter Bagehot. It was he who insisted that 'a princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such it rivets mankind'; and he who warned that the monarchy's 'mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic'.

  David Cannadine

  Memorable, Magic, Phrases

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• The State, every government whatever its form, character or color - be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik - is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

  Emma Goldman

  Character, Government, Color

  Emma Goldman (1998). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”

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