76 Oligarchy Quotes
Following is our list of oligarchy quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what is an oligarchy *.
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Famous Oligarchy Quotes
When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny. — John Adams
Oligopoly is an imperfect monopoly. Like the despotism of the Dual Monarchy, it is saved only by its incompetence. — John Kenneth Galbraith
Plutocracy.' It has a perfect nuance: chilly, inaccessible, icy-rich. — Graham Joyce
Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses. — Aristotle
Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy. — Che Guevara
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. — Montesquieu
We need to change the power structure in America, we need to end the political oligarchy. — Bernie Sanders
Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. — Aristotle
In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way. — Celia Green
Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos. — Polybius
A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property. — Harold Laski
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -- that is the democracy of capitalist society. — Vladimir Lenin
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. — Milton Friedman
People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich. — Jose Saramago
We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. — Henry A. Wallace
Short Oligarchy Quotes
- All systems are oligarchy. There is no other. — Tom Metzger
- A slave government is an oligarchy; and one, too, of the most arbitrary and criminal character. — Lysander Spooner
- Who says meritocracy says oligarchy. — Chris Hayes
- It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about. — Pat Robertson
- A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy. — Aristotle
- The fear is that we'll move in the direction from being a democracy to an oligarchy. — Jane Mayer
Oligarchy Government Quotes
Now is the time to alter our government. Now is the time to stop the movement toward oligarchy. Now is the time to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the 1%... No more excuses. We must all become involved in the political process. — Bernie Sanders
The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy. — Aristotle
All governments use force and all assert that they are founded on reason. In fact, whether universal suffrage prevails or not, it is always an oligarchy that governs, finding ways to give to'the will of the people'the expression which the few desire. — Vilfredo Pareto
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
It is acknowledged, namely, that there are in the world three forms of government, autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: autocracies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their lords, but democratic states according to established laws. — Aeschines
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
In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time. — Edward Abbey
Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people. — George Washington
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
A government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government. — Aristotle
People Writing About Oligarchy
More Oligarchy Quotes
A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies. — Che Guevara
The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war. — Josip Broz Tito
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. — Thomas Jefferson
Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. — Vladimir Lenin
Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master…Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware. — Mary Elizabeth Lease
An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. — Albert Einstein
This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it. — Bernie Sanders
They that are discontented under monarchy, call it tyranny; and they that are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy: so also, they which find themselves grieved under a democracy, call it anarchy, which signifies the want of government; and yet I think no man believes, that want of government, is any new kind of government. — Thomas Hobbes
The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don't mind admitting it. — Hunter S. Thompson
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
Democracy is one person, one vote and a full discussion of the issues that affect us. Oligarchy is billionaires buying elections, voter suppression and a concentrated corporate media determining what we see, hear and read. — Bernie Sanders
Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy? — Bernie Sanders
In many respects, this country is becoming an oligarchy, with a tiny percentage of America owning the media, owning the country. — Bernie Sanders
More striking still, it appeared that, if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Called to the throne by the voice of the people, my maxim has always been: A career open to talent without distinction of birth. It is this system of equality for which the European oligarchy detests me — Napoleon Bonaparte
Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny. — Henry James Sumner Maine
Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.' — Chris Hayes
Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy. — William O. Douglas
Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan. — Che Guevara
The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight. — Michael Lind
All men agree that a just distribution must be according to merit in some sense; they do not all specify the same sort of merit, but democrats identify it with freemen, supporters of oligarchy with wealth (or noble birth), and supporters of aristocracy with excellence. — Aristotle
It is the doctrine of the oligarchy that there is nothing that we hold in common, that the commonwealth is a myth, that it is even a sign of softheadedness and weakness. The oligarchical power feeds on the sense that we are all individuals, struggling on our own, and ennobled by the effort. — Charlie Pierce
The new America, instead, is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose job is to be good actors on TV and put on a good show. — Matt Taibbi
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. — Immortal Technique
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity. — Aristotle
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