A Quote by Aristotle

A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.

Aristotle

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Being Better Born Control Democracy Exists Few Free Government Lies Majority Off Oligarchy Rich Sovereign Those Well Whenever

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Aristotle
Greek - Philosopher
384 BC - 322 BC

The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

Aristotle

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

Aristotle

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few.

Aristotle

The billionaires and their super PACs increasingly control the American political process. This is not democracy. This is not what brave Americans fought and died to defend. This is oligarchy. This is government of the few, by the few and for the few. We must overturn Citizen United and move to public funding of elections.

Bernie Sanders

Because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government - democracy and oligarchy.

Aristotle

To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government. . . The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Being in school, whenever I laughed or smiled, I would turn to find someone staring at me with this terrible hatred and disgust. I had to control everything - control my voice, control my facial expressions, control my hair and my clothes, and where I walked and where I sat - at every moment. I think that drove me to terrible anxiety.

John Grant

Freedom is the quality of being free from the control of regulators and tax collectors. If I want to be free their control, I must not impose controls on others.

Hans F. Sennholz

You can't control where you were born, the family you were born into, what you look like; you can't control any of those circumstances. The only thing you can control is how you react.

Aisha Tyler

The ruling class is the rich. . . . And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy.

Walter Cronkite

There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.

Aristotle

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us.

Andrew Greeley

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Canadians should realise when they are well off under the Monarchy. For the vast majority of Canadians, being a Monarchy is probably the only form of government acceptable to them. I have always been for parliamentary democracy and I think the institution of Monarchy with the Queen heading it all has served Canada well.

Pierre Trudeau

Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.

Samuel P. Huntington

I remember talking to, 40 years ago, one of the leading people in the government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms control measures, détente, and so on. He's very high up, and we were talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially as a joke he said, "Well it might succeed if the high tech industry makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons-related research and production. If we get to that tipping point maybe arms control will work." He was partially joking but there's a truth that lies behind it.

Noam Chomsky

A Quote by Aristotle

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