Oligarchy Quotes - Page 4

• In the last presidential election Obama and Romney raised about $1 billion each. The Koch brothers, the second wealthiest family in America, now say they will raise nearly $1 billion for the 2016 elections. When one family can raise as much as an entire party, the system is broken. This is oligarchy, not democracy. We must overturn Citizens United.

  Bernie Sanders

  Brother, Party, America

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• Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Powerful, Numbers, Birth

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• Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates intellectual values, even in the universities. (The Anatomy of Influence)

  Harold Bloom

  Dark, Past, Counter Culture

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• The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war.

  Josip Broz Tito

  War, Italian, Yugoslavia

  "Tito: A Biography". Book by Jasper Ridley, 1994.

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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, Aristocracy

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• In this rigged, two-party system, third parties almost never win a national election. It's obvious what our function is in this constricted oligarchy of two corporate-indentured parties - to push hitherto taboo issues onto the public stage, to build for a future, to get a young generation in, keep the progressive agenda alive, push the two parties a little bit on this issue and that.

  Ralph Nader

  Party, Winning, Issues

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. September 24, 2008.

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• I never complain. I chose the road of fighting with the Ukrainian oligarchy in 1996, and have paid for this with my freedom and that of my husband, my father and my close friends.

  Yulia Tymoshenko

  Husband, Father, Fighting

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• What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

  Christopher Peterson

  Real, Decision, Democracy

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• Tradition is only democracy extended through time; it may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who are merely walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Father, Mean, Men

  'Orthodoxy' (1908) ch. 4

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• I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.

  Ted Nelson

  Numbers, Irrelevance, World

  "Computer Lib/Dream Machines". Book by Ted Nelson, 1974.

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• A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character.

  Lysander Spooner

  Character, Government, Criminals

  Lysander Spooner (1845). “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery”, p.125

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• There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.

  Aristotle

  Names, Two, Generic Name

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.307, Simon and Schuster

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• Anarchism is opposed to states, armies, slavery, the wages system, the landlord system, prisons, monopoly capitalism, oligopoly capitalism, state capitalism, bureaucracy, meritocracy, theocracy, revolutionary governments, patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, protection rackets, intimidation by gangsters, and every other kind of coercive institution. In other words, anarchism opposes government in all its forms.

  Donald Rooum

  Army, Government, Wages

  "What Is Anarchism? An Introduction". Book by Donald Rooum, August 1, 1992.

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• A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.

  Che Guevara

  Hands, Eras, Dawn

  Che Guevara (2002). “Guerrilla Warfare”, p.170, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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• Nothing in our time is more interesting than the erstwhile capitalist corporation and the erstwhile Communist firm should, under the imperatives of organization, come together as oligarchies of their own members.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Organization, Interesting, Together

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1971). “The new industrial state”, Houghton Mifflin

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• The real challenge is figuring out how the United States can regain control of its future from its new oligarchy and restore its position as a prosperous, fair, well-educated nation. For if we don't, the current pattern of great concentration of wealth and power will worsen, and we may face the steady immiseration of most of the American population.

  Charles Ferguson

  Real, Concentration Of Wealth, Political

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• I'm much more convinced that the hierarchy comes from the monarchy, and that the hierarchy stays apart from the oligarchy. So the oligarchy is hurtful to the majority in Bolivia.

  Evo Morales

  Hurtful, Majority, Bolivia

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. September 22, 2010.

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• Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  Law, Roots, People

  "Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred -Maurice de Zayas". July 01, 2013.

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• The American oligarchy increasingly has less in common with the American people than it does with the equivalent oligarchies in Germany or Mexico or Japan.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Japan, People, Doe

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• The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury?

  Ezra Heywood

  Kings, Men, Thinking

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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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• Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary. Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.

  James Madison

  Government, Roots, Principles

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States: The Principles of the American Government”, p.307, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government - democracy and oligarchy.

  Aristotle

  Two, Numbers, Government

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2050, Princeton University Press

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• Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Equality, Careers, Voice

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• Democracy appears to me potentially a higher form of political organization than any kind of dictatorship. But if it turns out that in America, which could afford a decent living for everyone, the comfortable majority is willing to condone the misery and abuse of a minority for an indefinite period, the exploitation by the majority becomes as repugnant as exploitation by an oligarchy, and democracy loses half its supposed superiority.

  Benjamin Spock

  Organization, America, Political

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