Aristocracy Quotes

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.

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.

Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place-that stud farm, so to speak-of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.

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.

When culture is created in boardrooms with a panel of six or seven strategists for the masses to follow, to me that is no different than an aristocracy. It's not created from the people in the middle of the streets, so to speak. It is created from a petri dish for the sake of making money, and it is undermining the longevity of the culture.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

It is a know fact that almost all revolutions have been the work, not of the common people, but of the aristocracy, and especially of the decayed part of the aristocracy.

Christianity is completely and radically anti-democratic; it is committed to spiritual aristocracy.

Wars are popular. Contractors make profits; the aristocracy glean honour.

A superfluity of wealth, and a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in aristocracy.

There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.