Top 1200 British Monarchy Quotes & Sayings

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family.

I'd like to see a much more open Monarchy, myself. I used to think they were completely useless and we should get rid of them. I don't necessarily feel that way anymore. I'm still ambivalent, I still loathe the British class system, and the Royal family are the apex of the British class system.

Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.

Radicalism is as British as tea and cakes, as much a part of our make-up as monarchy and football. It will never have its own jubilees, palaces or honours system.

Of all the memorable phrases that have been minted and mobilised to describe modern British royalty, 'constitutional monarchy' is virtually the only one which seemes to have neither been anticipated nor invented by Walter Bagehot. It was he who insisted that 'a princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such it rivets mankind'; and he who warned that the monarchy's 'mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic'.

One of the things about George III is that he was aware that the monarchy was slipping away. There was revolution in the air all over Europe. Because of the unpopularity of his predecessors, one of the things he wanted to do was to establish some sort of credibility to the monarchy.

The Monarchy...is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

British audiences are toughest on British films. So often, a British film is the last thing they want to see. If you please them, you really know you've made an impact.

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

I'm in favour of more democracy - let the British public decide what the future of the monarchy is and what shape it should be.

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

Americans love to mock the idea of monarchy, and yet we have our own de facto monarchy. I think what these leaks did is, they demonstrated that there really is this government that just is the kind of permanent government that doesn’t get affected by election choices and that isn’t in any way accountable to any sort of democratic transparency and just creates its own world off on its own.

How can a monarchy be a suitable thing, which allows a man to do as he pleases with none to hold him to account. And even if you were to take the best man on earth, and put him into a monarchy, you put outside him the thoughts that usually guide him.

I'm not a great fan of monarchy in general, but I have to say the Danish monarchy is closer to the people; it's not as stuffy as the English one.

Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily 'for our amusement'. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see it undermined but uneager to kill it off.

Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say, it is a limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly known in the schools, reserving as much of the monarchical splendor, the aristocratical independency, and the democratical freedom, as are necessary that each of these powers may have a control, both in legislation and execution, over the other two, for the preservation of the subject's liberty.

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

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.

British people are surprised that I'm British! It's extraordinary, I get tweets every day from British people saying, 'I had no idea you were British.'

If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation's mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation's needs.

I respect the British a lot - their history, their past, their culture. I think it's beautiful, what they have with the monarchy.

There is not a power in Europe, no not even Bonaparte's that is so unlimited [as the British monarchy].

Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.

Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution.

In the early 20th century the monarchy was held up as the archetypical virtuous British family. In the late 20th century it became the most wonderful symbol of the complete re-engineering of family structures.

I don't accept at all the quite popular argument that the press is responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. The monarchy's responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. To blame the press is the old thing of blaming the messenger for the message.

I know I'm British. I haven't spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasn't British, what would I be? I am British.

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

The British monarchy has the political and constitutional task of subtracting from the government and governors of Britain the papal and kingly airs that in America, because we have no such institution, unfortunately adhere to the president.

One advantage of a monarchy is that a monarchy does not suffer the effects of having great clots of white Christians moping around simply because they aren't the king or queen.

Well British pension funds have not been investing the savings of British people in British infrastructure.

Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or yen for others.

The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family. I find it very sad.

A Tory..., since the revolution, may be defined in a few words, to be a lover of monarchy, though without abandoning liberty; anda partizan of the family of Stuart. As a Whig may be defined to be a lover of liberty though without renouncing monarchy; and a friend to the settlement in the protestant line.

I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.

If you sit down with British officers or British senior NCOs, they understand the sweep of history. They know the history of British forces not just in Afghanistan but the history of British successful counter-insurgencies - Northern Ireland, Malaysia.

It seems to me that the Conservatives neither recognise the scale of the living standards crisis facing British families nor offer credible answers as to how the British economy or British society can be better in the future.

If the monarchy were removed tomorrow, it wouldn't have a huge effect on the national mind-set. The monarchy is mildly interesting and largely harmless. I can't find I can get very heated about it. In the next couple of generations, it is bound to go. There is so much else in the world that is more interesting.

Technically it was a victory for the British, who attacked the patriot fortifications but a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was: out of 2,200 British soldiers 1,034 were killed or wounded, including one in nine of all the officers the British lost in the whole war.

We think of the revolution ending in Yorktown, Va. The fact of the matter is that the French defeated the British in a naval battle right in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Because the British fleet was coming to rescue Cornwallis, the British general, Washington was able to surround Cornwallis.

The English monarchy is at best symbolic, whereas the Saudi monarchy is a bloodline, but it's also showing itself as a very primitive culture. So, I think we're moving further and further away from that kind of organization of humanity and the same I would say with religion. I think that organized religions, with the exception of Islam, are really falling by the wayside. People are starting to understand that the religious potential is within and that it's an individual pursuit.

The Billy Carter of the British monarchy.

In the 20th century, the position of the monarch as head of the Church of England was given a meaning which it never had before. You took the fact that the monarch was head of the Church of England to mean that the British monarchy was itself a religious or moral institution and the monarchy became a symbol of national public morality.

The invention of the camera enabled the reinvention of the British monarchy for the modern era.

I don't think the monarchy is tawdry in the slightest. I think the monarchy is hugely important for Britain.

People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

The British press hate a winner who's British. They don't like any British man to have balls as big as a cow's like I have.

I know Im British. I havent spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasnt British, what would I be? I am British.

Donald Trump has a pre-modern monarchic family structure. His business is a monarchy with family members all around. His administration is a monarchy with family members all around.

A lot of the time, the British press make me ashamed and embarrassed to be British. They give others the impression that the British are selfish, envious and bitter people, which is simply not true in my opinion. I think that British people in general are really nice and friendly.

You do now have one in three people, as shown by the famous Carlton Monarchy debate poll, saying they want to get rid of the Monarchy. That was unthinkable even three, four years ago.

I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.

'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.

No. I am not a royalist. Not at all. I am definitely a republican in the British sense of the word. I just don't see the use of the monarchy though I'm fierce patriot. I'm proud proud proud of being English, but I think the monarchy symbolizes a lot of what was wrong with the country.

When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

I believe that the visit of the Queen to the United States is an admirable occasion to produce an historical, truthful, sincere, genuine analysis of how the British Monarchy evolved into its present situation.

There are important arguments to be made about the relative merits of an hereditary or an elected head of state: but not at the level of the human frailties of particular monarchs or presidents. No one seriously contends that the American presidency should be abolished because Bill Clinton is a self-confessed adulterer. So why should the abolition of the British monarchy be contemplated because the same is true of Prince Charles?