Aristocracy quotes
105 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Our whole system of banks is a violation of every honest principle of banks. There is no honest bank but a bank of deposit. A bank that issues paper at interest is a pickpocket or a robber. But the delusion will have its course. ... An aristocracy is growing out of them that will be as fatal as the feudal barons if unchecked in time."
"Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place-that stud farm, so to speak-of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type."
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."
"In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way."
"I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside aristocracy — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos."
"There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency."
"A jackass has that kind of strength, and puts it to a useful purpose, and is valuable to the world because he is a jackass; but anobleman is not valuable because he is a jackass. It is a mixture that is always ineffectual, and should never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is going to come of it."
"The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves."
"The odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism scarcely capable of cure."
"And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference."
"All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence."
"An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy."
"There is only one true aristocracy . . . and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!"
"Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy."
"Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence."
"Consider Ireland.... You have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish Question."
"Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society."
"The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed."
"There exists a false aristocracy based on family name, property, and inherited wealth. But there likewise exists a true aristocracy based on intelligence, talent and virtue."
"The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy."
"An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies."
"There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob."
"All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast."
"The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness."
