Monarchy Quotes - Page 8

• I want self-determination. If that means having a constitutional monarchy as the first step, fine. But, in the end, people in Bahrain should have the right to vote and choose their president. A single family should not be allowed to rule on its own.

  Zainab al-Khawaja

  Mean, People, President

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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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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• There is nothing in the world I hold in greater horror than to see a body moving against its head: and I shall be very careful notto ally myself with such a monster.

  Elizabeth I

  Moving, Allies, Monsters

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

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Luxury, Republic, Poverty

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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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Donald Trump has a pre-modern monarchic family structure. His business is a monarchy with family members all around. His administration is a monarchy with family members all around.

  David Brooks

  Administration, Modern, Structure

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cities, Tyrants, Democracy

  Stephen Briggs, Terry Pratchett (2015). “Unseen Academicals”, p.13, Oberon Books

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• I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Thinking, Europe, Lasts

  "Émilius, Or, A Treatise on Education".

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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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• Monarchy is an outrage which even the blind of an entire people cannot justify... all men hold from nature the secret mission to destroy wherever it my be found. No man can reign innocently. The folly is too evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. Do kings themselves treat otherwise those who seek to usurp their authority?

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Kings, Men, People

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• Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Tyrants, Luxury, Republic

  "The Spirit of the Laws" by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Book VII: Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury and the Condition of Women, Ch. 4: Of Sumptuary Laws in a Monarchy, 1748.

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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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