Bartolo of Sassoferrato Quotes

We're not a democracy.

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.

It is foolishly thought by some that democratical constitutions will not, cannot, last; that the States will quarrel with each other; that a king, or at least a nobility, are indispensable for the prosperity of a nation.

Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.

We are convinced that the institution of monarchy is incompatible with the spirit and needs of modern times which demand an egalitarian relationship between one citizen and another

Democracy sounded well and good, but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a more practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man, than to find many of them.

I always believe the rule by king or official leader is outdated. Now we must catch up with the modern world.

No person is more convinced than I am of the necessity of giving great splendour and energy to the great hereditary magistracy exercised by the king; but in a free country, there can only be citizens and public officers.

Only that Swiss in the heart want still a king or at least a strong Upper House of Parliament. Swiss long themselves for less democracy and more dictatorship.

The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.

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.

Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

The Turkish state has neither a crowned head nor a dictator.

A democracy, when put to the strain, grows weak; and it is supplanted by oligarchy [rule by the few].

One of the distinctions between democracy and other forms of government is that while democracy is messy on the surface, other forms of government are messy underneath.

Democracy is slow … A king can always outrun a congressman.

What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state?

If it was not easy to make a king, it will be even more difficult to make a republic in a country where there are no republicans.

The king, in possession of the throne, was the sole representative of sovereignty, the sole representative of power. Not so in a Republic … Here we have no sole representative of power. The ballot box is the instrumentality through which the sovereign power is exercised.

The old Romans all wished to have a king over them because they had not yet tasted the sweetness of freedom

A people, [has an] inherent right to appoint and constitute a king supreme and all subordinate civil officers and rulers over them, for their civil good, liberty, protection, peace and safety..

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny.

We have a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

The truth is that neither then nor at any former time, since I had attained my maturity in Age, Reading and reflection had I imbibed any general Prejudice against Kings, or in favour of them. It appeared to me then as it has done ever since, that there is a State of Society in which a Republican Government is the best, and in America the only one.