Monarchy Quotes - Page 8

• The political structure in different countries has different origins, different developments. Something which suits one country extremely well would perhaps fail completely in another. Germany, through the long centuries of monarchy, has always had a leadership principle. ... The position of the Catholic Church rests now, as before, on the clear leadership principle of its hierarchy. And I think I can also say that of Russia, too.

  Hermann Goring

  Country, Thinking, Russia

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• It's very easy to just shout: 'Off with their heads!' Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion.

  Helen Mirren

  Fashion, Might, Easy

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• Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.

  Edward Gibbon

  People, Virtue, Factions

  Edward Gibbon (2015). “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire V3: the History Focus”, p.336, 谷月社

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• We have a huge institution that celebrates the undistinguished, an institution which is nearly as old as the Papists. It's been going on for millennia. What else is a monarchy but a series of ridiculously exalted figures who are not necessarily distinguished at all? In fact, they have a rather philistine tradition. So perhaps we are more vulnerable to it than other countries.

  Martin Amis

  Country, Vulnerable, Tradition

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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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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• Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.

  John Locke

  Mistake, Thinking, Hands

  John Locke, Peter Laslett (1988). “Locke: Two Treatises of Government Student Edition”, p.400, Cambridge University Press

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• You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.

  John Adams

  Power, President, Aristocracy

  Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 6 Dec. 1787

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• I think the relation between the monarchy and the press is very much a two-way street.

  Anthony Holden

  Thinking, Two, Way

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• I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Order, Law, Anarchy

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• [Magna Carta provided] "a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

  Winston Churchill

  Tyrants, Balance, Fool

  Randolph Spencer Churchill, Winston Churchill, Martin Gilbert (1983). “Winston S. Churchill: Companion Vol. V, Part Three, the Coming of War 1936-1939”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Country, Reality, Government

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• The world has witnessed the rise and fall of monarchy, the rise and fall of dictatorship, the rise and fall of feudalism, the rise and fall of communism, and the rise of democracy; and now we are witnessing the fall of democracy... the theme of the evolution of life continues, sweeping away with it all that does not blossom into perfection.

  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

  Fall, Perfection, Democracy

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• Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Imperfect, Incompetence, Oligopoly

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2015). “The New Industrial State”, p.226, Princeton University Press

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• When a monarchy gradually transforms itself into a republic, the executive power there preserves titles, honors, respect, and even money long after it has lost the reality of power. The English, having cut off the head of one of their kings and chased another off the throne, still go on their knees to address the successors of those princes. On the other hand, when a republic falls under one man's yoke, the ruler's demeanor remains simple, unaffected, and modest, as if he had not already been raised above everybody.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Kings, Fall, Cutting

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

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• Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies.

  Romare Bearden

  Happiness, Time, Art

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• There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

  Karl Marx

  Blow, Historical, Firsts

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin (1986). “India, National Liberation and Class Struggles: A Collection of Classical Marxist Writings”

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• In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality.

  David Starkey

  Religious, Mean, Church

  "What do the cards hold for British royalty?". www.cnn.com. August 19, 1996.

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• I don't accept at all the quite popular argument that the press is responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. The monarchy's responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. To blame the press is the old thing of blaming the messenger for the message.

  Anthony Holden

  Old Things, Messengers, Messages

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• Republics are brought to their ends by luxury; monarchies by poverty.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Luxury, Republic, Poverty

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• The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.

  Henry George

  Slave Owners, Special, Aristocracy

  Henry George (2006). “Protection Or Free Trade”, p.21, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation [of Texas] was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  War, Army, Texas

  Ulysses S. Grant (2013). “The Personal Memoirs of General U. S.”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• ... a thirst for power is the natural disease of monarchy.

  Thomas Paine

  Disease, Natural, Thirst For Power

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• Power always becomes consolidated back into the hands of very few people... whether they be an economic aristocracy, a royalty, a monarchy which is the most concentrated form of oligarchy where it depends on one King who is ordained supposedly by God to rule.

  Immortal Technique

  Kings, Hands, People

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• I do think that the legacy of the Norman conquest is still strong in Britain. Our hereditary monarchy, our established church, our ancient county structures, though hollowed out in many ways, are a direct result of what happened in 1066.

  Paul Kingsnorth

  Strong, Thinking, Church

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.

  Alexander Fraser Tytler

  Men, Self, Perfect

  " Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I" by Alexander Fraser Tytler, Petridge and Company, (p. 216), 1854.

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