49 Quotes About Oligarchy

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors ... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.

You said they were a…religious…?”“Oligarchy,” he finishes. “Ruled by five high priests, who are in turn elected by smaller delegations of regular priests, one for each sub-country. Though the common belief is that each high priest is chosen by God himself.”“God?” Artemisia asks.“They’re monotheistic, yes,” he says.She rolls her eyes. “Just say there’s only one. You aren’t in court, your fancy words don’t impress anyone.

A significant section of American voters recognize that a bureaucratic and “intellectual” oligarchy, at the national level, governs against the people’s interests. This is especially obvious in the oligarchy’s desire to import alien nationals as future voters in order to undercut a likely constitutional check on their power. This situation would be akin to the Roman Senate importing barbarians into Rome for the purpose of neutralizing the people’s assemblies.

Arrakis is a one-crop planet [...] One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings.

When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.

We will preserve the right to counsel for the common man in this age of oligarchic anarchy.

There has never been a communism that worked. They were all dictatorships or oligarchies, every single one.

The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.