Bhumibol Adulyadej Quotes

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.

The president of the United States is not a king. You know? Barack Obama was elected by the American people.

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.

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..

This magistrate is not the king. The people are the king.

The participation of the people in their own government was the more significant, because the colonies actually had what England only seemed to have, - three departments of government.

Elected representatives are so embedded in the basic notion of what constitutes a democratic nation that it has become indistinguishable from any other form of democratic governance.

I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.

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.

We're not a democracy.

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.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate.

In parliamentary and presidential democracies, the chief executive has been elevated from first among equals to the status of a monarch.

Whatever faults modern democracies may have committed ..., the faults chargeable on monarchs and oligarchies have been less pardonable and more harmful to the peace and progress of mankind.

America is essentially and radically a democracy, not in name merely but in deed.

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

Not that I distrust the King, but that I cannot give trust except in a parliamentary way.

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.

I am sensible that there are defects in our federal government, yet they are so much lighter than those of monarchies, that I view them with much indulgence. I rely, too, on the good sense of the people for remedy, whereas the evils of monarchical government are beyond remedy. If any of our countrymen wish for a King, give them Aesop's fable of the frogs who asked a King; if this does not cure them, send them to Europe. They will go back good republicans.

Constitutional democracy is a Western idea.