Monarchy Quotes - Page 10

• Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history : the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal "honor" and court etiquette.

  Isaac Asimov

  Names, Two, Honor

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't think a monarchy led by 75- and 80-year-old men [Saudi Arabia] in today's modern world is really sustainable.

  Thomas Friedman

  Men, Thinking, Years

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

  Garry Kasparov

  Chess, Bigamy, Acceptable

  Garry Kasparov (2010). “How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom”, p.59, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Investors, monarchies, and parliamentarians devised methods to control the processes of wealth accumulation and the power that came with it, but the ideology behind gold fever mobilized settlers to cross the Atlantic to an unknown fate. Subjugating entire societies and civilizations, enslaving whole countries, and slaughtering people village by village did not seem too high a price to pay, nor did it appear inhumane. The systems of colonization were modern and rational, but its ideological basis was madness.

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

  Country, Fate, Civilization

  47 Copy quote

• I'd like to see a much more open Monarchy, myself. I used to think they were completely useless and we should get rid of them. I don't necessarily feel that way anymore. I'm still ambivalent, I still loathe the British class system, and the Royal family are the apex of the British class system.

  Helen Mirren

  Thinking, Class System, Royal

  16 Copy quote

• In Barcelona, things seem so different. For example, I know that it's traditionally the least Spanish city, but you'd never know they had a monarchy, coming here as a tourist - as opposed to the UK, where the Queen is probably the best-known animal, vegetable and/or mineral going when it comes to overseas visitors.

  Julie Burchill

  Queens, Animal, Vegetables

  "Patriotism is for reactionaries ... nationalism is the way forward" by Julie Burchill, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2012.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily 'for our amusement'. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see it undermined but uneager to kill it off.

  David Cannadine

  New York, Long, People

  David Cannadine (1998). “History in Our Time”, Penguin Group USA

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.

  David Cannadine

  Stress, Thinking, Shadow

  4 Copy quote

• More attention should have been given to the fundamental transformation which took place during Queen Victoria's reign, from ruling sovereign to constitutional monarch. Again, gender mattered. If Albert had lived, it seems clear that he would have resisted that development much more tenaciously, which the gradual emasculation (and feminization) of monarchy was probably more easily accomplished when a woman was on the throne.

  David Cannadine

  Queens, Should Have, Sovereign

  4 Copy quote

• There's a deep affection and respect for the Queen and the monarchy in the U.K. But Diana was an extraordinary, iconic figure and her death sparked a fierce reaction, part grief and part anger at her being taken away. It was very fraught.

  Tony Blair

  Queens, Taken, Grief

  Source: www.macleans.ca

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wealth held by a class and used ambitiously becomes as despotic as an absolute monarchy, and has in its hands manners, customs, laws, institutions, and governments themselves.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Government, Hands, Law

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.' A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers.

  Laura Riding

  Names, Ideas, Two

  "Poetry and Politics". "The Common Asphodel". Book by Robert Graves, 1949.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that the visit of the Queen to the United States is an admirable occasion to produce an historical, truthful, sincere, genuine analysis of how the British Monarchy evolved into its present situation.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Queens, Believe, Historical

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I simply make this point, that the monarchy in so far, as it is identified with what is, in my opinion, an obsolete class structure, is making a mistake, and the task of those who are responsible for the conduct of the monarchical institution is to detach it from that class structure.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Mistake, Class, Tasks

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some countries have a parliamentary republic, some are presidential republics and some are still monarchies, but no one sees them as not being democratic. In some countries regional leaders are appointed from the centre and in others they are elected. In Russia, the president is elected through direct secret ballot, and in the United States, the president is elected through a system of electoral colleges.

  Vladimir Putin

  Country, College, Russia

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Our top-down pyramid style of management is a very old concept borrowed from centuries of war and monarchies.

  James Hunter

  War, Top Down, Pyramids

  James C. Hunter (2008). “The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership”, p.56, Crown Business

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I knew she was a party girl. The book I liked most on her was called [princess] Margaret: A Life of Contrasts and getting to know her, it was how conflicted her position and her internal life - or self - was. She is so fiercely royal and so fiercely "sister of the queen" or "daughter of the king" because that is her identity and it's all she's ever known. And at the same time she is struggling to push the boundaries and to break away from it, to be different or to modernize the monarchy, to turn it on its head.

  Vanessa Kirby

  Girl, Daughter, Queens

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's like a rugby team. If you're picking for the World Cup final, you're picking experience with youth. Everything is better off having that balance and that mix. I think that, especially, goes for the monarchy as well.

  Prince William

  Team, Thinking, Balance

  13 Copy quote

• There is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte's that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy].

  Charles James Fox

  Europe, British Monarchy, Unlimited

  "Charles James Fox" by L. G. Mitchell, London: Penguin, (p. 194), 1997.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think if the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set.

  Hilary Mantel

  Thinking, Mind, Tomorrow

  Source: newrepublic.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is so much else in the world that is more interesting [ than monarchy].

  Hilary Mantel

  Interesting, World

  Source: newrepublic.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source