Quotes on Aristocracy :: Finest Quotes

Aristocracy Quotes

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

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.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off; it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead”

Nancy Mitford

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

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

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 provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

Thomas Jefferson

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talent.

Carlyle Thomas

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

George Jean Nathan

It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.

W. H. Auden

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Thomas Jefferson

I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Thomas Jefferson

I have shown you how Machiavelli supplied the immoral theory needful for the consummation of royal absolutism; the absolute oligarchy of Venice required the same assurance against the revolt of conscience. It was provided by a writer as able as Machiavelli, who analyzed the wants and resources of aristocracy, and made known that its best security is poison.

John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton

To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.

Wystan Hugh Auden

The true aristocracy and the true proletariat of the world are both in understanding with tragedy. To them it is the fundamental principle of God, and the key, the minor key, to existence. They differ in this way from the bourgeoisie of all classes, who deny tragedy, who will not tolerate it, and to whom the word tragedy means in itself unpleasantness.

Karen von Blixen-Finecke

Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.

Napoleon Bonaparte