Quotes from Vilfredo Pareto

History is the graveyard of aristocracies.

For a very long time, and among a large number of peoples, political power has belonged to the owners of the land.

People reasoning on essences may sometimes substitute certitude for probability, even very great probability. But we know nothing about essences and accordingly lose our certitude.

The world has always belonged to the stronger, and will belong to them for many years to come. Men only respect those who make themselves respected. Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him.

The sentiment that is very inappropriately named quality is fresh, strong, alert, precisely because it is not, in fact, a sentiment of equality and is not related to any abstraction, as a few naive "intellectuals" still believe; but because it is related to the direct interests of individuals who are bent on escaping certain inequalities not in their favour, and setting up new inequalities that will be in their favour, that latter being their chief concern.

Human behaviour reveals uniformities which constitute natural laws. If these uniformities did not exist, then there would be neither social science nor political economy, and even the study of history would largely be useless. In effect, if the future actions of men having nothing in common with their past actions, our knowledge of them, although possibly satisfying our curiosity by way of an interesting story, would be entirely useless to us as a guide in life

There is not a reactionary, however extreme, who dares speak ill of the god People. It took an eccentric like Nietzsche to dare such a thing, and it makes him look like the exception that proves the rule.