Hereditary Power Quotes

Beware! The royal Dahomean dynasty has stumbled but has not fallen. .

Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble

In the Middle Ages, I think the French kings murdered slightly fewer of their family members than the English kings, though I haven't actually counted the heads.

Power travels in the bloodlines, handed out before birth.

[The Republican Party] consists of those who, believing in the doctrine that mankind are capable of governing themselves and hating hereditary power as an insult to the reason and an outrage to the rights of men, are naturally offended at every public measure that does not appeal to the understanding and to the general interest of the community.

… an anachronistic survival of monarchial privilege.

An aristocracy is the true support of a monarchy.

...institutions like the House of Lords must die, like all other organic beings, when their time comes.

I repeat for the umpteenth time, without making apologies: My children have had more than their fair share of presidency under their father. There cannot be any hereditary transfer of power.

In no State is there a weightier law than that which centers its stability in the supreme hereditary power of one particular family, unconnected and un-commingling with any other lineage in that State.

We have at least learned that the offspring of presidents don't necessarily make good politicians themselves.

I wish to make it clear from the onset that at the coming election I want support on no other understanding that the new Parliament is to destroy once and for ever, the power of the hereditary chamber to reverse the decisions of the representatives of the people.

I insist to this day that if you read the screenplay to 'The Queen,' it leaves you in no doubt that we considered her an isolated, out-of-touch, cold, emotionally inaccessible, overprivileged, deluded woman, heading an institution that should immediately be dismantled in any free and fair society.

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.

Royalty mostly seem like members of some anachronistic faith, like the Amish, peculiar in gilded buggies.

[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

The political power of the Country must fall eventually into the hands of certain great families as it always has done in other republics.

No one can deny that the Americans are more democratic than the English; yet the government of England feels more directly than that of the United States the force of public opinion. Each has its check on the action of the popular will. In the United States the check is found in narrowing and lengthening the channels by which that will reaches the governing powers; in England it consists of an hereditary crown and an hereditary nobility, which can restrain but cannot thwart the people.

It was hardly their own shining abilities alone that allowed a son, two grandsons, and a son-in-law of Winston Churchill to make their way into parliament.

Before we made films about gangsters, everything was about the royal families. They contain so much drama.

Members of royal families are born into a world of indulgence and entitlement, and the princelings who grow up that way may never have to develop any discipline.

Donald Trump has a pre-modern monarchic family structure. His business is a monarchy with family members all around. His administration is a monarchy with family members all around.

There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.

American political scions evoke a central contradiction in our thinking. We believe - or say we do - in nurture, not nature. Yet we are comforted by the aristocratic notion that leadership might run in the bloodlines.