Quotes About Oligarchy

A self-perpetuating aristocracy easily hardens into an oligarchy, and therefore a senate, for example, should be replenished from the ranks of the people.

The biggest political divide in America today is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they're being shafted.

Socialism for the rich means the oligarchy is not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control—such as the closing of factories across the Midwest or a Wall Street financial crisis—and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

One explanation for their complicity is that Trump's divisiveness is politically helpful to them. It keeps Americans fighting each other rather than discovering their common interest in fighting oligarchy.

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It's between democracy and oligarchy.

Wealth is so concentrated that a large segment of society is virtually unaware of its existence.

America today is less a democracy and more an oligarchy.

The middle class is collapsing and we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society, where the billionaires will control the economy and the political life of the country.

In America, we are living in a society which is moving more and more toward an oligarchic form of society where government is dominated heavily by big-money interests.

tratemos de imaginarnos lo que será un mitin político del futuro. El candidato (si es que cabe hablar todavía de candidatos) o el representante nombrado por la oligarquía gobernante, pronunciará su discurso para que todos lo oigan.

A corrupt monarchy is a tyranny, a corrupt aristocracy an oligarchy, and a corrupt polity a democracy.

I did not think the Oligarchy would allow Trump to win. However, it seems that the oligarchs were deceived by their own media propaganda.

Like Nemesis of Greek tragedy, the central problem of America after the Civil War, as before, was the black man: those four million souls whom the nation had used and degraded, and on whom the South had built an oligarchy similar to the colonial imperialism of today, erected on cheap colored labor and raising raw material for manufacture.

Organization implies a tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of any kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and a majority of directed.

Ever since that day, success in politics has meant that people who aspired to public office had to give the illusion of democracy while delivering the reality of oligarchic rule.

Rome became a republic in 509 B.C., after driving out its king and abolishing the monarchy. The next two centuries saw a long struggle for power between a group of noble families, patricians, and ordinary citizens, plebeians, who were excluded from public office. The outcome was a apparent victory for the people, but the old aristocracy, supplemented by rich pledeian nobles, still controlled the state. What looked in many ways like democracy was, in fact, an oligarcy modified by elections.

Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump's autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.

rule by one man, rule by the many, or rule by the few.

The standard Greek terms for these would soon become established as, respectively, tyrannis, demokratia, and oligarchia.

A democracy cannot rule an empire. Neither can one man, though empire may appear to presuppose monarchy. There is always an oligarchy somewhere, open or concealed.

The composition of the oligarchy of government [...] emerges as the dominant theme of political history [...] ; it is something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory of the constitution.

In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class.

The Augustus of history and panegyric stands aloof and alone, with all the power and all the glory. But he did not win power and hold it by his own efforts alone: was the ostensible author and prime agent in the policy of regeneration merely perhaps carrying out the instructions of a concealed oligarchy or the general mandate of his adherents?