Quotes About Aristocracy

At the time of the American Revolution, the terms 'left' and 'right' themselves did not yet exist. A product of the decade immediately following, they originally referred to the respective seating positions of aristocratic and popular factions in the French National Assembly of 1789.

So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humors and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences afford us. . . . It may . . . be pronounced as an universal axiom in politics, That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives, form the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

Democracies are turbulent. . . . Aristocracies are better adapted for peace and order, and accordingly were most admired by ancient writers; but they are jealous and oppressive.

A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as great a terror -- and they last longer.

Where might is, the right is: Long purses make strong swords. Let weakness learn meekness: God save the House of Lords!

Prelate, n. A church officer having a superior degree of holiness and a fat preferment. One of Heaven's aristocracy. A gentleman of God.

My husband's family was terribly refined. Within their circle you could know Beethoven, but God forbid if you were Beethoven.

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Aristocracy is that form of government in which education and discipline are qualifications for suffrage and office holding.

An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

The true policy of government is to make use of aristocracy, but under the forms and in the spirit of democracy.

The pursuit of perfection always implies a definite aristocracy, which is as much a goal of effort as a noble philosophy, an august civil polity or a great art.

It is the clash of two different worlds that makes British-ness unique - we have an aristocratic, noble history, but it is always contrasted with something rebellious.

The Catholic Church with its foreshortened American history and tangled puritanical roots was as inviolate to my mother and father as it was to the last-ditch aristocrats of Evelyn Waugh.

The fate of you, the aristocracy of industry, will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land if you do not show that you have some humanity still among you.

Entrenched aristocracies, however we may want to define them, do not want change; their desire instead is to manage dissent in a way that does not disrupt their control. But over time, under the right system of government, a free, thinking people has the energy and ultimately the power to effect change.

Finally, in August 1607, the cream of Ulster's Irish aristocracy, including Hugh O'Neill himself, left Ireland for permanent exile. Other Irish were to follow these hundred or so key leaders until by 1614 "there were 300 Irish students and 3,000 Irish soldiers in Spanish territories alone.

A course on philosophy introduced her to a new hero, the Renaissance scholar Erasmus, who "believed in one aristocracy—the aristocracy of intellect," she wrote in a paper. "He had one faith—faith in the power of thought, in the supremacy of ideas." Elizebeth, a smart person from a working-class family, found this concept liberating: the measure of a person was her ideas, not her wealth or her command of religious texts.

the Renaissance scholar Erasmus, who "believed in one aristocracy—the aristocracy of intellect," she wrote in a paper. "He had one faith—faith in the power of thought, in the supremacy of ideas.

The Hazeldean heart was a proverbial boast in the family; the Hazeldeans privately considered it more distinguished than the Sillerton gout, and far more refined than the Wesson liver; and it had permitted most of them to survive, in valetudinarian ease, to a ripe old age, when they died of some quite other disorder. But Charles Hazeldean had defied it, and it took its revenge, and took it savagely.

I didn't know Countesses were so neighborly.

At a stroke she had pricked the van der Luydens and they collapsed. He laughed, and sacrificed them.