Top 273 Monarchy Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

I believe that many people have forgotten what their roots are. This is one of the advantages of countries with a monarchy. The monarch offers identity across generations, and is a part of these roots and this native country.

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.

We have allowed an unholy alliance of government - the new monarchy - and corporate influence - the new aristocracy - to take control of events in a way that would have made our Founders shudder.

Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

It's very easy to just shout: 'Off with their heads!' Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion.

[Magna Carta provided] "a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool.

If, to expose the fraud and imposition of monarchy . . . to promote universal peace, civilization, and commerce, and to break the chains of political superstition, and raise degraded man to his proper rank; if these things be libellous . . . let the name of libeller be engraved on my tomb

The Emperor Napoleon, ascending gradually from his post of national magistrate to seat himself upon a throne without limits, seems to have wished to punish, as for the abuse of republican reforms, by making us feel all the weight of absolute monarchy.

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.

I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - is one I would feel sympathetic about.

Just as an individual of pre-eminent worth transforms democracy into a monarchy of the best man, even so the rule of one man, if in all things it has an eye to the common welfare, is democracy.

I grew up between the two world wars and received a rather solid general education, the kind middle class children enjoyed in a country whose educational system had its roots dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

I tend to be a bit of a proselytiser for the importance of royal courts, but all politics - in fact every form of human organisation, and this is something that's so dreadful for all those brought up in the 60s - naturally reverts to monarchy. Newspapers have editors, companies have chief executives.

A monarchy is like a man-of-war--bad shots between wind and water hurt it exceedingly; there is danger of capsizing. But democracy is a raft. You cannot easily overturn it. It is a wet place, but it is a pretty safe one.

I think the most grievous threat that we have today is this imperialistic judiciary, this judicial monarchy that has it wrong on what the First Amendment's about and has an objective to create religious sterility in the public square, which is wholly inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' view.

We owe gratitude to France, justice to England, good will to all, and subservience to none ... it was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

Why doesn't the United States take over the monarchy and unite with England? England does have important assets. Naturally the longer you wait, the more they will dwindle. At least you could use it for a summer resort instead of Maine.

The State, every government whatever its form, character or color - be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik - is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

There was no doubt that in the early and mid-eighties that many of us in broadsheet newspapers felt that we still had a responsibility to try to protect the Royal Family or if you like protect the Monarchy from the assaults of the media.

We eliminated the monarchy. We put limits on how long one person could lead our country and on the powers they held while in office. We took differences of opinion seriously - in fact, we built them into the fabric of our government.

Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor.

We could have a political movement going if it had been properly organized but the Monarchy's done itself enormous damage possibly beyond the point of long-term recovery.

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

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.

Fear and monarchy pair nicely. But democracy means you have to work with people you may not like but you must still believe are your equals. And a fearful people never trust the other side.

The United States was founded on a revolution that abolished the monarchy, aristocracy, titles and primogeniture. Britain may be able in the future to become a more equal and open society while retaining all of these things. But this has yet to be proved.

There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.

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.

I hate the unfairness of injustice. Anybody who thinks they are better than others or 'chosen' or feel they have an entitlement... be it through monarchy, government or money. I think we are all born the same. We are entitled to an equal shot at life.

Unity in wills cannot be unless there is one will dominating and ruling all the rest to oneness... wills of mortals have need of a directive principle... therefore for the well-being of the world, there should be a monarchy.

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.

I'm much more convinced that the hierarchy comes from the monarchy, and that the hierarchy stays apart from the oligarchy. So the oligarchy is hurtful to the majority in Bolivia.

It's like a rugby team. If you're picking for the World Cup final, you're picking experience with youth. Everything is better off having that balance and that mix. I think that, especially, goes for the monarchy as well.

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures.

Louis XVI started to die on June 21st 1791. For his flight tore away the veil of that false constitutional monarchy, and once more confronted the Patriot party with the whole problem of the revolution's future.

It is clear that in a monarchy, where he who commands the exceution of the laws generally thinks himself above them, there is lessneed of virtue than in a popular government, where the person entrusted with the execution of the laws is sensible of his being subject to their direction.

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

Countries that managed to rebuild commanding state structures after popular nationalist revolutions - such as China, Vietnam, and Iran - look stable and cohesive when compared with a traditional monarchy such as Thailand or wholly artificial nation-states like Iraq and Syria.

In Mesopotamia or Egypt, for example, the monarch had a god-like religious status. But this is not the case in Judaism. So that notion that religion can go on, when all the markers of power and trappings of monarchy disappear, ultimately serves the endurance of Judaism very well.

The fundamental difference between Islamic government, on the one hand, and constitutional monarchy and republics, on the other, is this: whereas the representatives of the people or the monarch in such regimes engage in legislation, in Islam the legislative power and competence to establish laws belong exclusively to God Almighty.

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.

The Windsor monarchy is held in just awe. The whole process of criticism of the personal behaviour of the monarch is put in absolute suspense until about 1977, when it begins again.

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.

A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy - "A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men.

A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.

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.

The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.

It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of parliament to look at the men as well as at the measures.

In fact, after having abolished the monarchy, the best of all governments, [the French Revolution] had transferred all the public power to the people - the people... ever easy to deceive and to lead into every excess

The monarchy is so extraordinarily useful. When Britain wins a battle she shouts, God save the Queen; when she loses, she votes down the prime minister.

I have only met Prince Charles once, when he was very charming and easy to chat to. I have always had a soft spot for him, and I admire our constitutional monarchy, but Charles often comes across as eccentric, and he has a mixed press.

I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.

When you look at the history of the monarchy, there's one period that stands out where it is held in universally, awe-inspired reverence and esteem. It's not Henry VIII, its certainly not Victoria; it's the first 70 years of the 20th century.

I simply make this point, that the monarchy in so far, as it is identified with what is, in my opinion, an obsolete class structure, is making a mistake, and the task of those who are responsible for the conduct of the monarchical institution is to detach it from that class structure.

The sudden collapse of the monarchy that had ruled Russia for three hundred years led to chaos. Russia immediately became, as one participant put it, 'the freest country in the world.'

I want self-determination. If that means having a constitutional monarchy as the first step, fine. But, in the end, people in Bahrain should have the right to vote and choose their president. A single family should not be allowed to rule on its own.