Political Sayings
21 sayings found from the Ancient era from 9 authors
Category
It is evident that the form of government is best in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.
The best form of government is a polity, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy.
The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both the other classes.
A man is a political animal.
The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class.
Tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy looks to the interest of the wealthy; democracy, to the interest of the needy: none of them to the common good of all.
I have restored the Republic.
I refused to be made dictator.
On my sixth and seventh consulships, after I had extinguished the civil wars, having by universal consent acquired control of all affairs, I transferred the republic from my power to the discretion of the Senate and people of Rome.
No one shall be oppressed under my rule.
I was granted my rule by the gods 'to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak'.
The only way to ensure loyalty is through absolute oppression.
When the government is lazy and careless, the people are unspoiled; when the government is efficient and smart, the people are discontented.
For what you hold is, to speak somewhat plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, but to let it go is unsafe.
Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to acquire it, but it is certainly dangerous to let it go.
We do not get into a state with our next-door neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way, nor do we shoot him the kind of black looks which, though they do no real harm, still vex an honest man. We are free and open in our political life; in our p…
The narrative designed for internal consumption was fiction moulded around a kernel of fact: the pharaoh was indeed cut off from his army, he did face a chariot onslaught while outnumbered, and he did inflict casualties. He lost, but so what? As poli…
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.
And so the probable outcome of too much freedom is only too much slavery in the individual and the state. Probably, then, tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy—from the height of liberty, I take it, the fiercest extreme of serv…