Oligarchy Quotes - Page 2

• You are talking to a leftist. I believe in the redistribution of wealth and power in the world. I believe in universal hospital care for everyone. I believe that we should not have a single homeless person in the richest country in the world. And I believe that we should not have a C.I.A. that goes around overwhelming governments and assassinating political leaders, working for tight oligarchies around the world to protect the tight oligarchy here at home.

  Abbie Hoffman

  Single, Country, Believe

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• There is an error common to both oligarchies and to democracies: in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law, are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich, whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause; just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintain the cause of the people, . .

  Aristotle

  Cutting, Errors, Law

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2080, Princeton University Press

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• Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Majority Rule, Democracy, Difficult

  Samuel P. Huntington (2012). “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century”, p.66, University of Oklahoma Press

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• Don't sit around waiting for the two corrupted established parties to restore the Constitution or the Republic. The founding generation was birthed by the rabble of all walks of life that got fed up and did risky things because they were captivated by the breath of liberty. There is a looming oligarchy and it is up to the people to organize a grassroots movement and push back.

  Naomi Wolf

  Party, Two, People

  "Naomi Wolf Thinks the Tea Parties Help Fight Fascism -- Is She Onto Something or in Fantasy Land?". Interview with Justine Sharrock, www.alternet.org. March 29, 2010.

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• The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy.

  Aristotle

  Character, Government, Democracy

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.389, Simon and Schuster

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• The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Patriotic, Hands, Twists

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States”, p.325

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• Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

  Chris Hayes

  Able, Way, Allies

  Chris Hayes (2012). “Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy”, p.57, Crown

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• Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

  Aristotle

  Fall, Government, Class

  Aristotle (1943). “On man in the universe: Metaphysics, Parts of animals, Ethics, Politics, Poetics”

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• It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about.

  Pat Robertson

  Tyrants, Tyranny, Concerned

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• 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 that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mean, Class, Giving

  Orthodoxy ch. 4 (1908)

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• But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.

  Pat Robertson

  Mistake, Home, Erosion

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• It is acknowledged, namely, that there are in the world three forms of government, autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: autocracies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their lords, but democratic states according to established laws.

  Aeschines

  Government, Law, Democracy

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• Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.

  Milton Friedman

  Freedom, Mean, Men

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.15, University of Chicago Press

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• Democracy is one person, one vote and a full discussion of the issues that affect us. Oligarchy is billionaires buying elections, voter suppression and a concentrated corporate media determining what we see, hear and read.

  Bernie Sanders

  Media, Issues, Democracy

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• No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.

  John Dewey

  Government, Leader, Enlightenment

  John Dewey (2016). “The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry”, p.161, Ohio University Press

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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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• 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

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• A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government.

  Aristotle

  Class, Government, Democracy

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.324, Simon and Schuster

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• Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master…Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware.

  Mary Elizabeth Lease

  Country, Wall, Government

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• . . . this oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every house of the nation.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Daughter, Mother, Brother

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• The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

  Aristotle

  Government, Numbers, Democracy

  Aristotle, (2016). “Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens”, p.98, Princeton University Press

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• It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and ennobled by the effort.

  Charlie Pierce

  Struggle, Effort, Weakness

  "I Dream of Common Wealth" by Charles P. Pierce, www.esquire.com. March 29, 2012.

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• The interesting thing about that is one of the greatest critics of socialism and leftwing writings was Robert Michels who wrote a series of essays called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy" and in these essays he discusses how no matter what sorts of freedoms are advertised or put into a society structure, that all societies, all form of governments - whether they be a Roman republic, whether they be a democracy, whether they be a Russian communist system, whatever, a tribe... a tribal council - all of the continuously, throughout the ages, have all converted back into an oligarchy.

  Immortal Technique

  Writing, Government, Law

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• The new America, instead, is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose job is to be good actors on TV and put on a good show.

  Matt Taibbi

  Jobs, Clever, Ghetto

  Matt Taibbi (2010). “Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America”, p.33, Spiegel & Grau

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• We have been very effectively pacified by the pernicious ideology of a consumer society that is centered on the cult of the self - an undiluted hedonism and narcissism. That has become a very effective way to divert our attention while the country is reconfigured into a kind of neofeudalism, with a rapacious oligarchic elite and an anemic government that no longer is able to intercede on behalf of citizens but cravenly serves the interests of the oligarchy itself.

  Chris Hedges

  Country, Self, Government

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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