Thomas Hobbes Quotes

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.

There are still two forms besides democracy and oligarchy; one of them is universally recognized and included among the four principal forms of government, which are said to be (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) democracy, and (4) the so-called aristocracy or government of the best. But there is also a fifth, which retains the generic name of polity or constitutional government.

A democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.

There be three sorts of government--monarchical, aristocratical, democratical; and they are apt to fall three several ways into ruin--the first, by tyranny; the second, by ambition; the last, by tumults. A commonwealth grounded upon any one of these is not of long continuance; but, wisely mingled, each guards the other and makes that government exact.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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

Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

Monarchy hardens into despotism. Aristocracy contracts into oligarchy. Democracy expands into the supremacy of numbers.

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

It is better to be subject to the Laws under one Master, than to be subservient to many.

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

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.

In most of the countries where the people don’t like their government, we are now allowed to ask whether people like their government.

Monarchy and aristocracy, valuable and useful as I think them, are still valuable and useful as means, and not as ends.

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?