Aristocracy Quotes - Page 4

• The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.

  Thomas Paine

  Character, Rose, Democracy

  Thomas Paine (1835). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.87

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  War, Government, Leader

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena”, p.166, Cornell University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  Military, Government, People

  "Report of the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order". United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council, Session 24, July 01, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wars are popular. Contractors make profits; the aristocracy glean honour.

  Ramsay MacDonald

  War, Profit, Contractor

  23 Copy quote

• English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doors, English History, Class

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.243

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Poetry, Novelists, Serious

  7 Copy quote

• If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Cutting, Apples, Tree

  11 Copy quote

• A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Government, People, Democracy

  213 Copy quote

• Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

  Aristotle

  Two, Government, Democracy

  Aristotle, Stephen Everson (1996). “Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens”, p.95, Cambridge University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Believe, Men, Thinking

  'Leviathan' (1651) pt. 2, ch. 19

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

  Aristotle

  Kings, Names, Government

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.299, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things.... It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Strong, War, Smart

  "Give War a Chance". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1992.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those in authority within institutions and social structures attempt to justify their rule by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with moral symbols, sacred emblems, or legal formulae which are widely believed and deeply internalized. These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the 'votes of the majority,' the 'will of the people,' the 'aristocracy of talents or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings' or to the alleged extraordinary endowment of the person of the ruler himself.

  C. Wright Mills

  Kings, Divine Right, People

  "Character and Social Structure". Book by C. Wright Mills, 1953.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would be the last to deny that the greatest scientific pioneers belonged to an aristocracy of the spirit and were exceptionally intelligent, something that we as modest investigators will never attain, no matter how much we exert ourselves. Nevertheless ... I continue to believe that there is always room for anyone with average intelligence ... to utilize his energy and ... any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain, and that even the least gifted may, like the poorest land that has been well-cultivated and fertilized, produce an abundant harvest.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Believe, Intelligent, Men

  31 Copy quote

• The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Law, Age

  "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II, Book Two, Chapter XX, 1840.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Feelings, Forgiving, Democracy

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon in his own words from the French of Jules Bertaut”, Рипол Классик

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• laughter, that distinctively human emotion, laughter which springs from trust in the other, from willingness to put oneself momentarily in the other's place, even at one's own expense, is the special emotional basis of democratic procedures, just as pride is the emotion of an aristocracy, shame of a crowd that rules, and fear of a police state.

  Margaret Mead

  Laughter, Spring, Pride

  7 Copy quote

• In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.

  Celia Green

  People, Democracy, Way

  Celia Elizabeth Green (1976). “The decline and fall of science”, Hamish Hamilton

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now.

  Pete Seeger

  Kings, Queens, Europe

  Source: www.folkmusicworldwide.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyone who lives like a modern aristocracy, the last thing they exhibit is a sense of gratitude. Me, Im very fortunate.

  James Ransone

  Gratitude, Lasts, Modern

  7 Copy quote

• 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, Noble

  11 Copy quote

• Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.

  Ayn Rand

  Equality, Men, Law

  Ayn Rand (1999). “The Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution”, p.119, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was a JOB; the video show was a JOB; you don't tell the Aristocrats joke at 8 o'clock at night on network tv, it would be funny though. But those guys know I like dirty stuff, I like clean stuff too.

  Bob Saget

  Jobs, Dirty, Night

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now people want what the movie was about, which is violent comedy. And that's really what The Aristocrats is based on - what will a family do out of desperation.

  Bob Saget

  People, Want, Comedy

  "Bob Saget talks dirty about The Aristocrats". MovieWeb Interview, movieweb.com. July 25, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a new land - a land of pretension because it is new; because classes and systems have not had that time to grow here naturally. We have no aristocracy but of virtue and talent, which is the only true aristocracy, and is the old and true meaning of the term.

  Thomas D'Arcy McGee

  Class, Land, Talent

  Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source