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Aristocratic Quotes

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Aristocratic Quotes

“What happened to Athenian democracy? The conservative way was overthrown by rampant innovation. Old structures were replaced with fluid, mobile opinions (i.e., democracy). Aristocratic leaders were replaced by demagogues. A similar transformation has occurred in American life, only on a more massive scale, with innovation threatening the most basic social structures. Everything has been transformed today, and nothing is what it once was. If we have conservatives in today’s society, they have almost nothing left to conserve. The licentiousness of the multitude is the supreme law, so that freedom no longer means freedom from an oppressive government. Rather, it is the freedom to behave in a manner that requires greater and greater government involvement; more and more government intervention – from family courts to health care.”

AristocraticDemagoguesLicentiousnessAthenian Democracy
Author:J.R.Nyquist
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“I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.”

BelieveHumansSaidStillsStatesCoursesDealsOughtEssenceConvictionExtremesCeaseHuman SocietyAristocratic
Book:the Revolt of the Masses
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“In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.”

PlayRealityAgeTodayTurnsChanceFourCenturyPossibilityOrdinaryAcceptedReachingCapitalistOddsNobilityOrdinary LifeKinderLikelihoodPinnacleAristocraticSociety TodayBeing Accepted
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance.”

PeopleActionChurchCommonOpinionClassDangerEnjoyedRuthlessHeresyRenaissanceBourgeoisInterferenceSuppressionInquisitionAristocratic
Book:Men of Destiny (Ppr)
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“When we consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic.”

IfsNeedsHandsLightSocialStudyDevelopmentConnectionsOrganizationOvercomingDemocraticSeparationOppositionAestheticCultivationRefiningAristocraticSocial Organization
Book:Democracy And Education
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“In virtually every Continental state at this time, aristocracies had to live with the risk that their property might be pillaged or confiscated. Only in Great Britain did it prove possible to float the idea that aristocratic property was in some magical and strictly intangible way the people's property also. The fact that hundreds of thousands of men and women today are willing to accept that privately owned country houses and their contents are part of Britain's national heritage is one more proof of how successfully the British elite reconstructed its cultural image in an age of revolution.”

PeopleMenWayIdeasCountryStatesFactsMightAgeTodayHouseAcceptingRiskWillingRevolutionProveMen And WomenPropertyBritishProofBritainHeritageElitesFloatsAristocracyGreat BritainIntangibleBritish HistoryContinentalAristocraticCountry Houses
Book:Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837
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“Politics of all sorts, I confess, are far beyond my limited powers of comprehension. Those of this country as far as I have been able to observe, resolve themselves into two great motives. The aristocratic desire of elevation and separation, and the democratic desire of demolishing and levelling.”

Has BeensTwoCountryAbleDesireDemocraticSeparationMotiveResolveComprehensionElevationAristocratic
Book:Journal of a Residence in America
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“So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these peculiar questions of everybody - important people, young men, slaves - questions that had to do with ultimately what's the life that's worth living. And Plato was one of the young men who hung around him, a very aristocratic young man, came from a very old, important family.”

PeopleMenKindImportantYoungMiddlePhilosophicalAskingSlaveYoung ManPeculiarHungUrbanPlatoWorth LivingAthensGorillasHanging AroundAristocraticGadflies
Author:Rebecca Goldstein
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“To make Democracy work, you need an aristocratic democracy. To make Aristocracy work, you need a democratic aristocracy.”

NeedsDemocracyDemocraticAristocracyAristocratic
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“One main condition of aristocratic life was present in the South and not in the North--personal responsibility to other human beings for education and material welfare. (A Carnegie or a Ford, like a bureaucracy, molds the lives of millions without taking any responsibility.)”

HumansHuman BeingsResponsibilityMillionsConditionsMaterialsSouthWelfareBureaucracyMoldPersonal ResponsibilityCarnegieAristocraticResponsibility To Others
Book:The interior landscape: the literary criticism of Marshall McLuhan, 1943-1962
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“If you're smart enough you realise that your possessions possess you in their turn. Collecting has a neurotic aspect. I find it boring when collectors found their own private museums or try to establish a memorial to themselves in the form of their collections, it's part of the old aristocratic mentality. I think a collection ought to be dismantled after the collector's death.”

IfsThinkingTryingEnoughFormTurnsFoundOughtSmartAspectPossessionBoringCollectionsMuseumsRealisingMentalityMemorialCollectingNeuroticCollectorsAristocratic
Author:Thomas Koerfer
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“The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.”

PoliticalAbsolutesFundamentalsMajorityTyrannyArticlesCreedsBloodySovereigntyCouncilArbitraryEmperorAssemblyDespotismAbsolute PowerDiabolicalAristocratic
Author:John Adams
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“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.”

IfsHas BeensGovernmentFormInterestKnownClassEndureFinancialPatternsThriveEmpiresBureaucracyRulingRoyaltyAristocracyHereditaryAristocratic
Book:Children of Dune
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“These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.”

PeopleThinkingMindBelievePersonsIdeasFeelingsSeemsPassionPerfectMaterialsClothesDelightContrarySymbolsSatisfyingSuperiorityEleganceCultivatingAristocraticDandyDandyism
Author:Charles Baudelaire
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“Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.”

IfsMenWorldWantWarWould BeFacesFightingSpeakSidesDemocracyHe ManSafeRedClaimsVictimBeing TrueTyrantsAntiwarSolitaryPatriotMurdererFace To FacePretenseSpeak The TruthTraitorRobbersArchesAristocraticHumbugConspirators
Author:Eugene V. Debs
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“America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.”

PeopleWorldHas BeensWarCountryDreamAmericaPastClassPovertyRichLandDiseaseTyrannyIdeologyAspirationThreatenedDreams Come TruePlagueIdeologicalClutterMenaceUnattainableIlliteracyUnrealityDemagogueryAristocratic
Book:The Image or What Happened to the American Dream
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