Aristocracy Quote by Polybius

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

— Lord Acton

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

— Aristotle

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny,…

— Aristotle

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what…

— Madeleine Albright

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

— Plato

A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy.

— Aristotle

The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.

— Arthur Balfour

Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of…

— Anonymous

There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but…

— Baron de Montesquieu

Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty.

— Anonymous

Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.

— Edward Gibbon

“The outcome is to delegitimize and deconstruct the kings in effective ways in order to show that while they occupy the forms of power,…

— Walter Brueggemann