In monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.
Samuel AdamsAlthough the Macedonians, whose territory occupied the area around present-day Thessaloniki in northern Greece, considered themselves part of the Greek cultural sphere, many Greeks regarded them with contempt. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Macedonians were a mere offshoot of the original stock. They spoke a Greek dialect, to be sure, but they were led by a backward monarchy and their nobles.
The best reason why monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardlyanywhere in the world understand any other.
walter bagehotHere lies a king, that ruled as he thought fit The universal monarchy of wit.
thomas carewThey 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 hobbesIt never or rarely happens that a republic or monarchy is well constituted, or its old institutions entirely reformed, unless it is only done by one individual.
We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can ... We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.
In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.
garry kasparovOnce you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble.
anthony sampsonLands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are every where considered as causes of expence, not as sources of revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy, ought to belong the crown.
Adam SmithPeople think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.
Friedrich EngelsAmericans ought be listening to Russ Feingold in these defining days for the Republic, because what the Democratic senator from Wisconsin is saying goes to the heart of the question of whether a nation founded in revolt against monarchy will be ruled by laws or by the crude whims of an intemperate sovereign and his out-of-control administration.
russ feingoldBut at no one time had he given an unqualified opinion of the governments which succeeded that event [the abolition of the French monarchy]; much less would he stand pledged to give the least countenance to the scenes of blood and cruelty which had been the almost inseparable attendants on the varied and successive governments that followed one another. He formed his opinion of government by the test of practice, and not by the theory and on paper.
charles james foxThere is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte's that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy].
charles james foxThe worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.
robert anton wilsonIn monarchy the crime of treason may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.
When Victor Adler objected to Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: "And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein [Trotsky] sitting over there at the Cafe Central?"
We have been given an assignment as a monarchy, and we do as well as we can ... We try to be as little populistic as possible. We don't do anything on the spur of the moment to win an opinion poll, or short-term popularity.
To a certain extent the Macedonian monarchy had already been a unifying element in Greek history, even before the conquests of Alexander.
In truth, the abuses of monarchy had so much filled all the space of political contemplation, that we imagined everything republican which was not monarchy. We had not yet penetrated to the mother principle, that "governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it." Hence, our first constitutions had really no leading principles in them. But experience and reflection have but more and more confirmed me in the particular importance of the equal representation then proposed.
[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.”
Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution perhaps the first modern political institution.
The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing.
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
samuel johnsonThe Film Industry is the American monarchy: it is strict entailed succession and Horatio Alger in one. Except for the money manipulators and speculators on the top, it is a society built onwork, achievement, and fealty tothose in power.
"Well, Doctor, what have we got a Republic or a monarchy?" "A Republic, if you can keep it."