Theodor Mommsen Quotes

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

…the plebeians and the Senate of Rome were often at strife with each other concerning the enactment of laws, the canceling of debts, the division of lands, or the election of magistrates.

The big guys, the big dogs, are going to own everything from the White House to the courthouse.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

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

Julius Caesar was an aristocrat who sided with the Roman people. He's not my hero, but he was one of a long line of what we'll call 'populares,' which were popular leaders who tried to institute these reforms that the people were fighting for.

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes.

I would not say that George Bush doesn't care about people at all. I think that his loyalties are to the upper class.

In politics, there are no friends.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

To detail the real evils of aristocracy, they must be seen in Europe.

The people who own the country are now going to get to run it.

In the end, civil wars are about the distribution of power.

While the politicians fight for place and power, what of the destinies of the common people, in whose name and for whose alleged benefit the contending factions appeal to the world at large?

For the first time in the life of the great republic, there was a political organization which grappled directly and fundamentally with the growing injustice which marked the dealings between Exploiters and the Exploited

In oligarchies, militarism has leaped forward, while in those nations which have retained democracy militarism has waned.

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.

Our hotel was full of legislators and volunteer officers, mostly planters or sons of planters, and almost without exception men of standing and property. South Carolina is an oligarchy in spirit, and allows no plebeians in high places.

Social change … almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power.

Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.

The history of the Republican Party is marked by vacillation between its founding principle of opportunity and its domination by the wealthy elite.

Oligarch is just a nonsense word. What does it mean? I don't like it.