Dan Webster Quotes

And when people in power can stay in power they do very little to tinker with the apparatus that put them in power.

There is a tendency in all parties, when they have been for a long time in possession of power, to augment it.

All systems are oligarchy. There is no other.

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.

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

The Iron Law of Oligarchy: every field of human endeavor, every kind of organization, will always be led by a relatively small elite.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

There's very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

Those who have the power and should be the most responsible are often the least responsible.

What you had at the time was a dictatorship with the team owners.

The incurably suspicious Arthur Lee, youngest brother of Richard Henry, was of opinion that what others termed 'errors' in the Constitution were a deliberate scheme to create an oligarchy.

The rich and the well-born, according to the Federalist Papers, was greatly feared by the founders.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to be drawn to stories about abuses of power. But I'm also drawn, not so much to victims' stories, as stories that tend to show how power works. Because if you don't understand the criminals, you can't figure out how to stop the crimes.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

If there is a public perception at all, they see the producer as a big old guy who smokes a cigar and has lots of money and lots of power. That's not what a producer is and, if it ever was what a producer was, it certainly hasn't been for a long time.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Most Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.

The very existence of government implies inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior of those who are not, as long as he is the repository of power.

Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

For thousands of years, the natural tendency of elites everywhere has been to monopolize power rather than restrain it.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.