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“There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations;”
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

“Greed, crowned emperor,
rules the earth with cold disdain
for harmony’s path.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“When you live under such an oligarchy, there is always some crisis or the other that takes priority over boring stuff such as healthcare and pollution. If the nation is facing external invasion or diabolical subversion, who has the time to worry about overcrowded hospitals and polluted rivers? By manufacturing a never-ending stream of crises, a corrupt oligarchy can prolong its rule indefinitely.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Yes, Latinos dream more. When you live in poverty, when your president is imposed upon you, when they kill someone and no one gets indicted, and when only a few get rich, of course you dream more. It's no coincidence that magic realism happens in Latin America, because for us dreams and aspirations are part of life.”
― Jorge Ramos

“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election. -- Aristotle, Politics, Book IV”
― Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle: Books I-V : A Revised Text

“What the United States call democracy is actually a vertical model of remote governance by oligarchs—economic barons and their political representatives. The result is that citizens in the United States have little control over what the U.S. government does.”
― S. Brian Willson

“Big government = oligarchy.
Simple equation.
Big government = loss of representation.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The Establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.”
― Owen Jones, The Establishment: And How They Get Away with It

“The principle of equality, which is at the core of democratic values, has very little meaning in a world in which global oligarchy is taking over.”
― Bell Hooks

“A "centrally planned economy" by definition discourages and despises participation by the masses. It's a bureaucratic oligarchy.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Money has replaced the vote.”
― Chris Hedges

“The Russian oligarchic system is the quintessence of statist depravity, where all industry is controlled by a small number of men ruthless enough to rise to the top of a corrupt patronage system, where government serves the interests of elites, money and privilege flow to the top, the people are exploited through a venomous cocktail of brutality and graft, and truth is the enemy of the state.

Russian oligarchy is economic survival of the fittest, the ultimate, balls-out Darwinian experiment in wealth consolidation by the most wicked, immoral and dishonest â€� government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich at the expense and misery of everyone else.”
― Matt Szajer, No: No

“The financial elite already have the politicians in their pockets, as a result of their lobbying.”
― Kenneth Eade, Terror on Wall Street, a Financial Metafiction Novel

“The vast growth of the proletariat, the concentration of ownership into the hands of a few owners, and the exploitation by those owners of the mass of the community, had no fatal or necessary connection with the discovery of new and perpetually improving methods of production. The evil proceeded in direct historical sequence, proceeded patently and demonstrably, from the fact that England, the seed-plot of the Industrial System, was already captured by a wealthy oligarchy before the series of great discoveries began.”
― Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State

“You said they were a…religiousâ€�?â€�

“Oligarchy,� he finishes. “Ruled by five high priests, who are in turn elected by smaller delegations of regular priests, one for each sub-country. Though the common belief is that each high priest is chosen by God himself.�

“God?� Artemisia asks.

“They’re monotheistic, yes,� he says.

She rolls her eyes. “Just say there’s only one. You aren’t in court, your fancy words don’t impress anyone.”
― Laura Sebastian, Lady Smoke

“We hold each other and I’m shaking, because I’m thinking how close I came to losing her. If she’d been closer to ground zero in San Diego, she’d be dead now. So many people are dead, because for decades citizens like me and my dad, my uncle, and Lissa’s parents—good people—quietly financed war after war because it’s easier to pay our taxes than to risk our livelihoods by trying to change the system. Our silence let wealth accumulate in the hands of people like Thelma Sheridan, people who came to believe they could buy absolutely anything, even innocence.”
― Linda Nagata, First Light

“We will preserve the right to counsel for the common man in this age of oligarchic anarchy.”
― Kenneth Eade, The Spy Files

“The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed or killed. It’s not their children out there, blinded by manufactured patriotism or lured into the service with the promise of economic stability, all with the sanctimonious blessings of misguided public consent by way of corporate, state-sponsored media. It won’t be their children who are terrorized by Wahabbist insurgents tearing through city blocks and rural areas as only an ever-devouring plague could. It won’t be any of their loved ones watching thousands of years of civilization unraveling like an old sweater as each thread of wool is lit on fire or stolen to sell on the black market for greedy consumers with a fetish for hijacked Mesopotamian artifacts.”
― M.B. Dallocchio, The Desert Warrior

“...[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
~~”
― Christian Bible, Matthew 19:24, King James version

“The composition of the oligarchy of government [...] emerges as the dominant theme of political history [...] ; it is something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory of the constitution.”
― Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution

“Arrakis is a one-crop planet [...] One crop. It supports a ruling class that lives as ruling classes have lived in all times while, beneath them, a semihuman mass of semislaves exists on the leavings.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”
― Henry A. Wallace

“They control Europe under the attractive and falsely uniting banner of the “European Unionâ€�, the Middle East under the convenient banner of “fighting terrorismâ€�, Africa and South America under the false and misleading banners of “democracy and developmentâ€�, and many other banners under which the most hideous crimes are daily committed against humanity. Indeed, a closer examination reveals that all these banners are just different logos for one and the same goal, which is to ensure that the overwhelming—and overwhelmed—majority of people are imprisoned, disabled, and deprived of their fair share of bread, sun, and dignity.”
― Louis Yako

“By vice, dissipation, and extravagance, [the nobility] have been driven to the most despicable, and often the most atrocious actions, for which persons in a humble line would be exemplarily punished, while men and women of rank claim the privilege of being infamous.”
― Eliza Parsons, The Girl of the Mountains

“In the room of holding out an example for imitation, [the nobility] give only a warning to the lower classes of the people, who are taught to despise the boasted pre-eminence of birth, when attached to the meanest actions and most unwarrantable pursuits; and from hence proceeds all the licentiousness and spirit of equality that causes general disturbance.”
― Eliza Parsons, The Girl of the Mountains

“Vain mistaken mortals, who, valuing themselves on names and titles, suppose that the virtues of the mind must be attached to an empty sound, when every day's experience proves that birth is disgraced, titles rendered contemptible, and riches a curse, by the vices, meanness, and dissipation of its possessors!”
― Eliza Parsons, The Girl of the Mountains

“The illegal and immoral economic sanctions against #Iran, #Syria & #Venezuela by the #US and all it's western / other lackeys, to subjugate those countries to fall in line with the "American Oligarchal Will" (otherwise known as US foreign policy) amounts to "Economic Terrorism.”
― Mamur Mustapha

“A significant section of American voters recognize that a bureaucratic and “intellectualâ€� oligarchy, at the national level, governs against the people’s interests. This is especially obvious in the oligarchy’s desire to import alien nationals as future voters in order to undercut a likely constitutional check on their power. This situation would be akin to the Roman Senate importing barbarians into Rome for the purpose of neutralizing the people’s assemblies.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“Because [Jeff Bezos] and [Mark Zuckerberg] own $100 billion in the current state of the legal system, the current state of the fiscal system, the current way the international economy is organised, people say, ‘OK, $100 billion, exactly the right level.â€� But with a different legal system, different international taxation, it could be 200, it could be 50. So what would be the story? Any level that they will attain, it will be the best? This kind of sacralisation of special individuals is a form of religious thought. People who use this kind of argument: ‘He's great, therefore –â€� therefore what? Therefore we should subsidize him so that he's even richer?”
― Thomas Piketty

“DEMOCRACY ALLOWS ONE TO RIG MINDS. THAT SPACE WAS UNENCROACHABLE IN MONARCHIES.

THE DANCE OF DEMOCRACY”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor