Top 100 Quotes About Aristocracy
#1. Whatever advantages may have arisen, in the past, out of the existence of a specially favored and highly privileged aristocracy, it is clear to me that today no argument can stand that supports unequal opportunity or any intrinsic disqualification for sharing in the whole of life.
Margaret Mead
#2. The aristocracy of Western Europe has absolutely tabooed silver in those countries and driven it away from there. Here it finds its only resting place.
Richard Parks Bland
#3. The Roman Republic would soon be destroyed by the unfettered energy of its great men. The redeeming feature of this aristocracy and
Will Durant
#4. 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.
Tom Robbins
#5. I've always been fascinated with aristocracy. I'm really interested in the Ivy Leagues, the final clubs, all the really old-money families, the concept of old money.
Lorde
#6. An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
#7. A nation is truly corrupted when having ... lost its character and it's liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy. That is the decrepitude and death of the body politic ...
Maximilien De Robespierre
#8. Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place-that stud farm, so to speak-of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type.
Mark Twain
#9. I always have to get my U.K. fix, and 'Downton Abbey' is definitely that. I absolutely love period dramas, but this one is particularly appealing - following the ins and outs of aristocracy as well as the interaction between the rich and the poor.
Estelle
#10. I'm proud of being British, but I think our aristocracy is overrated.
Paloma Faith
#11. I'll draw up a list. [ ... ] You can give me a general idea, if you like: hair color, eye color-"
"None!"
"None? Bit of a tall order, there, Gwen. Aristocracy lacks for albinos.
Meredith Duran
#12. So many secrets," he said. "The Dallas Aristocracy and their freaking secrets.
R.J. Scott
#13. In revolt against this new and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenth century, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fast perishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition.
Ralph Adams Cram
#14. The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#15. The faith in reason insists that the poverty of democracy offers a greater hope for mankind than the prosperity that attaches itself to aristocracy or despotism.
Bill Vaughan
#16. To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China - the greatest and oldest despotism in the world - for a cheap working slave.
Denis Kearney
#18. The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli; but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.
Rebecca West
#19. I want to play a princess or some woman from royalty or aristocracy. If I get to have an accent, even better. And I want to play a butt-kicking superhero, like Catwoman.
Christa B. Allen
#20. Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.
Marcel Proust
#21. All that is noble is in itself of a quiet nature, and appears to sleep until it is aroused and summoned forth by contrast.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#23. Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#24. Say what you will, there is something fine about our old aristocracy. I'll bet Trotsky couldn't hit a moving secretary with an egg on a dark night.
P.G. Wodehouse
#25. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi put it succinctly in one of his speeches when he declared his ambition that Europe "supersedes democracy" and that democracy be replaced by a "social aristocracy of the spirit."52
Yanis Varoufakis
#27. Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#28. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people.
Inazo Nitobe
#29. 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.
Aristotle.
#31. Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
G.K. Chesterton
#32. 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.
Celia Green
#33. I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country.
Andrew Jackson
#34. English history is aristocracy with the doors open. Who has courage and faculty, let him come in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#35. I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.
James Salter
#36. The entrenched interests of the regional nobility prevented the proper functioning of a government built upon ethical practice. While high-minded scholars often called for reforms, their memoranda carried little weight with an idle aristocracy.
Joan Stanley-Baker
#37. There is only one true aristocracy ... and that is the aristocracy of passionate souls!
Tennessee Williams
#38. Aristocracy and exclusiveness tend to final overthrow, in language as in politics.
William Dwight Whitney
#39. There are a lot of books about the passing of the English aristocracy, but the vast majority of Long Islanders don't understand their own backyard. It's a private preserve.
Nelson DeMille
#40. As much as I adore Agatha Christie - and I think people make this claim about murder mysteries in general - it's often a very conservative mode of storytelling. Usually it's the greedy, climbing, new-money slimeball who wants to take from the aristocracy.
Christopher Bollen
#41. The intellect, like all cultural values, has created an aristocracy based on the possession of rational culture and independent of all personal ethical qualities of man. The aristocracy of intellect is hence an unbrotherly aristocracy.
Max Weber
#42. You are apprehensive of monarchy; I, of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.
John Adams
#43. I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential.
James D. Watson
#44. Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.
Gene Kelly
#45. The aristocracy in the future is not one of wealth or university education, but the aristocracy of the men who have done something for themselves and their fellow men.
Charles M. Schwab
#46. 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.
Bertrand Russell
#48. One of the interesting things is is that Judaism was very attractive to the Roman aristocracy.
Susan Jacoby
#49. I remembered Father remarking once that if rudeness was not attributable to ignorance it could be taken as a sure sign that one was speaking to a member of the aristocracy.
Alan Bradley
#50. When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.
Lorde
#51. Way back in the old days, say in Europe of the Middle Ages, you had an aristocracy, and they could afford to pay for musicians. The kings and queens had musicians in the castles, and that developed into symphony orchestras and what we call "Classical music" now.
Pete Seeger
#52. To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.
George Bernard Shaw
#54. Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity
Thomas Jefferson
#55. Icy and earthy, Helen Mirren is a rare, regal presence in a movie age that values the plebeian over the patrician and mass over class. Lauded with an Oscar and an Emmy for playing both Queen Elizabeths, Mirren has matched her cool aristocracy with a boldness of performance and display.
Richard Corliss
#56. Power always becomes consolidated back into the hands of very few people ... whether they be an economic aristocracy, a royalty, a monarchy which is the most concentrated form of oligarchy where it depends on one King who is ordained supposedly by God to rule.
Immortal Technique
#57. 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.
Mercy Otis Warren
#58. Who is fit to be elected?' asked Napoleon. 'A Caesar, an Alexander only comes along once a century, so that election must be a matter of chance.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
#59. 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.
James Larkin
#60. 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.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. The tea-kettle is as much an English institution as aristocracy or the Prayer-Book ...
Catharine Beecher
#62. My son, be rich and live your own life! Tell yourself that you're the incarnation of an ancient aristocracy. Model yourself on the feudal barons. You're a warrior
Colette
#63. Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.
Anatole Broyard
#64. The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.
Mark Twain
#65. In England we only make films about the working class or the aristocracy.
Nigel Cole
#66. You must meet old Rowbotham, Bertie. A delightful chap. Wants to massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy. Well, nothing could be fairer than that, what?
P.G. Wodehouse
#67. Aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human species.
Thomas Paine
#68. Like the aristocracy, you can tell a reporter's status by his clothes and manners. The worse they are, the higher up they are,
Iain Pears
#69. 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.
Benjamin Disraeli
#71. 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
#72. 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.
Thomas Hobbes
#73. An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
#74. This regard for the liberties of Europe, this care at one time for the protestant interest, this excessive love for the balance of power, is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.
John Bright
#76. The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness.
D.H. Lawrence
#77. 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
#78. I have always believed that the aristocracy of any country should be the men who have succeeded - the men who have aided in upbuilding their country - the men who have contributed to the efficiency and happiness of their fellow men.
Charles M. Schwab
#79. Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success.
James F. Cooper
#80. The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemicalenergy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#81. Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
W. H. Auden
#82. Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#83. There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. Today, the mere idea of aristocracy is incompatible with the dominant ideology. But every people needs an aristocracy. It's an integral part of human nature and can't be dispensed with. The question then is not 'For or against aristocracy?' but 'What kind of aristocracy?
Guillaume Faye
#85. ...which recall(s) a moment in time when raw excess made them a casual aristocracy, apart from the rest of the world.
Andrea Lee
#86. The Chinese state is constructed in an entirely different way from western states. Unlike European states, for over a millennium the Chinese state has not been obliged to compete for power with rivals such as the church, the aristocracy or merchants.
Martin Jacques
#87. We stand a better chance with aristocracy, whether hereditary or elective, than with monarchy.
Ezra Stiles
#88. If the aristocracy of the whole white race is so to melt in a world of the colored races of the Earth, I for one should only rejoice in such a divine triumph of the sacrificial idea in history; for it would mean the humanization of mankind.
George Edward Woodberry
#89. It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.
John Boyle O'Reilly
#90. There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy.
Ian Fleming
#91. The door of opportunity swings wide open in our country. Through it, in constant flow, go those who toil. America recognizes no aristocracy save those who work. The badge of service is the sole requirement for admission to the ranks of our nobility.
Calvin Coolidge
#92. It is not growing fanaticism, but growing democracy, that causes my troubles. Did you ever read the life of Averroes? He was protected by kings, but hated by the mob, which was fanatical. In the end, the mob won. Free thought has always been a perquisite of aristocracy.
Bertrand Russell
#93. In feudal times the aristocracy had sent their sons to university, conferring superiority on the institution. Nowadays it was the other way round: the university conferred superiority on the man.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#94. When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.
Wendell Phillips
#95. The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.
George Eliot
#96. There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this.
Theodore Roosevelt
#97. I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist, unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses.
Benjamin Disraeli
#98. But there is no such thing, sir, as a ghost, and I guess the laws of Nature are not going to be suspended for the British aristocracy
Oscar Wilde
#99. England was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus
George Orwell
#100. Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government ... can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.
George Washington
