Harold MacMillan Quotes

Fearing the weakness of democracy, men have always sought safety in technocrats. But ... [we] have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down before the divine right of experts.

Political power, considered in general, not descending in particular to monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, comes directly from God alone.

[There] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.

A true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.

At one time kings were anointed by Deity, so the problem was to see to it that Deity chose the right candidate. In this age the myth is "the will of the people" ... but the problem changes only superficially.

Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?

As in the Divine Right of Kings, hierarchies invest those who preside at the top of their pyramidal structure with absolute power to rule over the lesser ranks that spread down like a marble staircase to the broad foundation stones of those with no power at all.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

You are afraid of the one, I, of the few.... You are apprehensive of monarchy, I, of aristocracy.

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.

I do not conceive God did ever ordain [democracy] as a fit government for either church or commonwealth …. As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both clearly approved and directed in the Scriptures.

Chile is still at the whim of powerful, traditional elites who sit as a higher societal authority than the elected government.

Queen of the Great Democracy

The mob begins to think and reason. Poor reptiles!

It is certain that, so soon as the people submit to a king, really such, they have no longer the supreme power.

In no form of government is there an absolute identity of interest between the people and their rulers

The Republic established by the founders was a fragile experiment in a world bestrode by kings, queens, emperors, czars, dictators, and theories of aristocracy.

Our democratic belief that anyone can be a political leader paradoxically feeds into the anti-democratic belief that we should look to one person to quickly and easily save us. No one, alone, can fix it, and in our system of government, this authoritarian approach is a prescription for catastrophe.

It's not necessarily the most compelling thing for a liberal like myself to be making an impassioned plea for the divine rights of kings and for observing the hierarchy of order, of class and authority.

Any acceptance of authority is the very denial of truth.

Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men. ... Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general ... are generally obeyed as a matter of duty (and) assumed to have a kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom.

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power.

When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done—and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done.