Monarchy Quotes
More Monarchy Quotes
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 Adams— Arguing for a Riot Act which prohibited 12 or more persons from congregating in public and which empowered county sheriffs to kill rioters, during debates prompted by Shays' Rebellion (1786 - 1787) and the death sentences given to many of the rebels; as quoted in Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States (1980), Chapter 5: A kind of Revolution; also quoted in "Completing the American Revolution" by Norman D. Livergood
...for the first time he [Philip] began to understand how Macedonia's outdated institutions of feudalism and aristocratic monarchy, so despised by the rest of Greece, might prove a source of strength when dealing with such opponents.
peter green— Alexander the Great (1972, p. 24)
Although 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.
— Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Dutch author, researcher and clinical professor of leadership development, "Are Leaders born or Are they made?: The case of Alexander the Great", Karnac Books (June 2004)
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 bagehot— 1867 The English Constitution, ch.6,'The Monarchy'.
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.
john adams— XVIII, p. 483. Usually misquoted as "Democracy…while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy".
Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water."
fisher ames— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1844): Politics
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.
— Interview in Wenche Fuglehaug (November 21, 2005). "Norway's monarchy turns 100", Aftenposten, Aftenposten Multimedia A/S, Oslo, Norway.
"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— Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, Alexander Fraser (1854). Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. Petridge and Company. p. 216.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.
alexander fraser tytler— The earliest known attribution of this quote was December 9, 1951, in what appears to be an op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman under the byline Elmer T. Peterson, Elmer T. Peterson (9 December 1951). "This is the Hard Core of Freedom". Daily Oklahoman: p. 12A. . The quote has not been found in Tytler's work. It has also been attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.
— There are many variants circulating with various permutations of majority, voters, citizens, or public. Ronald Reagan is known to have used this in speeches, as reported in Loren Collins, "The Truth About Tytler":
— Other variants:The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
If a British parliamentarian comes to sue for peace, he must first kneel before the imperial standard, for this is a victory of monarchy over democracy.
— Remarks made after the first German successes of the Spring Offensive (26 March 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 618.
The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.
walter bagehot— No. III, "The Monarchy (continued)", p.75
People 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 Engels— Introduction to 1891 edition of Karl Marx's, The Civil War in France
Americans 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 feingold— The Nation, Feb 12 2006
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— In an article written for the New York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857 [1]
The monarchy of the Greeks for want of an heir was broken into several kingdoms; four of which, seated to the four winds of heaven, were very eminent. For Ptolemy reigned over Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia ; Antigonus over Syria and the lesser Asia; Lysimachus over Thrace ; and Cassander over Macedon, Greece and Epirus .
isaac newton— Vol. I, Ch. 12: Of the Prophecy of the Scripture of Truth
Politics have always covered two distinct kinds of problems: problems of administrative routine, and those that may be called 'questions of the moment.'... A question of the moment is, indeed, a substitute for some notion, such as the idea of God, or hereditary monarchy, or national glory, that has hitherto acted as a symbol of human co-ordination. It provides no new positive certainty to replace the discredited certainty, but is what the name implies: the raising of a question which the old certainty no longer answers.
laura riding— Laura Riding and Robert Graves from "Poetry and Politics", reprinted in The Common Asphodel (1949)
The law of causality, I believe, like mud that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
bertrand russell— Ch. 9: On the Notion of Cause.
How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
alan watts— YouTube video
The 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 wilson— The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by M. Gabriel Sartines
...for the first time he (Phillip) started to understand how Macedonia's outdated institutions of feudalism an aristocratic monarchy so despised by the rest of Greece.
— Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 24
You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass will hold together under the forms of a republic, and the despotic reality of universal suffrage; whether state rights will hold out against centralisation, without separation, whether centralisation will get the better, without actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a permanent bureaucracy; and as population thickens in your great cities, and the pressure of what is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk among you, and communism and socialism will claim to be heard.
thomas henry huxley— Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and Education (1904), p. 138.
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.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Kercheval (July 12, 1816); in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1899), vol. 10, p. 37.
[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, Magna Carta and Man’s Quest for Freedom, JW.org
In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.
Edward Gibbon— Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II, Chapter XVII
But where, say some, is the King of America? I'll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain... so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.
thomas paine— Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).
Anarchism is opposed to states, armies, slavery , the wages system, the landlord system, prisons, monopoly capitalism, oligopoly capitalism, state capitalism, bureaucracy, meritrocracy, theocracy, oligarchy, governments, patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, protection rackets, intimidation by gangsters, and every other kind of coercive institution. In other words, anarchism opposes government in all it's forms.
— Donald Rooum, in What is Anarchism? (1992) ISBN 0900384662
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... which I usually construct in terms of the way it institutionalises deference, can be expressed much more simply: it rots the brain. ... This romancing about the royal family is, I fear, only a minor symptom of the softening of the brain of socialists ...
— In Monarchy, and in New Statesman, Volume 129, Issues 4493-4505, p.ixxxix
The 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.
— 1986 Writing in Restaurants,'Observations of a Backstage Wife'.
