"Autocracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the emperor and more to Germany. He did precisely the contrary of what he should have done. The Hohenzollern dynasty has distinguished itself beyond all other German dynasties by its moral nature and material temperament of pure and undisguised autocracy. The Prussian dynasty has become more absolute than the Catholic and imperial dynasties of Germany. A Catholic king always finds his authority limited by the Church, which depends completely on the Pope, whereas a Prussian ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... though Felix was paternal enough to say to himself nearly all the time, 'I can't let Nedda get further into this mess!' he was philosopher enough to tell himself, in the unfatherly balance of his hours, that the mess was caused by the fight best of all worth fighting—of democracy against autocracy, of a man's right to do as he likes with his life if he harms not others; of 'the Land' against the fetterers of 'the Land.' And he was artist enough to see how from that little starting episode the whole business had sprung—given, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... presidents of our institutions of the advanced education. "Trust the People" is the shibboleth! "Let the People rule!" "The cure for too much Liberty is more Liberty!" To Democracy plain and simple—Composite Wisdom—I frankly confess I feel no call,—no call greater than, for instance, towards Autocracy or Aristocracy or Plutocracy. Taken simply, and applied as hitherto applied, all and each lead to but one result,—failure! And that result, let me here predict, will, in the future, be the same in the case of pure Democracy ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... cities of the Peruvian empire filled with splendid temples and palaces, but throughout the country were magnificent works of public utility, such as roads, bridges, and aqueducts. The government of the Incas, the royal, or ruling race, was a mild, parental autocracy. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... related by so many strands of connexion that the movement in any one of these is reflected in the rest. The liberties of England are fostered by the emancipation of the Alsatian, the Slovak, or the Pole. They are enfeebled by the victories of political autocracy or the military machine. Thinkers, it may be said, ought to be above these mundane influences. Philosophy should deal with what is in itself and eternally rational and just and wise. But philosophy as it exists on earth ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Conference, Wesley clearly gave its members to understand that his autocracy was to be in no way limited by their action. 'They did not,' he writes, 'desire the meeting, but I did, knowing that in the multitude of counsellors there is safety. But,' he adds significantly, 'I sent for them ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... such power as no monarch ever wielded! Riches—pshaw! Riches were the least of it. He could create them, practically. But they would be superfluous. Power: unlimited, absolute power was his goal. With his end achieved he could establish an autocracy, a dynasty of science: whatever he chose. Oh, it was a rich-hued, golden, glowing dream; a dream such as men's souls don't formulate in these stale days—not our kind of men. The Teutonic mysticism—you understand. And it ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... weakened the stately columns that upheld the imposing structure of the Universal Church. Even within the Church itself there was seething inquietude, and thousands of its purest souls longed, prayed and struggled for its practical amendment. To emancipate the Church from the clutches of the autocracy of Rome; to remove the abuses that, in the course of centuries, had grown round and sullied its primitive purity; to lighten the fiscal oppression of the Papacy and to check the rapacity of the Cardinals; to reform and discipline ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Krum was a far more capable ruler than they had bargained for, and he not only united all the Bulgars north and south of the Danube into one dominion, but also forcibly repressed the whims of the nobles and re-established the autocracy and the hereditary monarchy. Having finished with his enemies in the north, he turned his attention to the Greeks, with no less success. In 809 he captured from them the important city of Sofia (the Roman Sardica, known to the Slavs as Sredets), ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... sing to you a brand new song, made by a modern pate, Of a fine young German Emperor, an Oracle of State, Who kept up his autocracy at the bountiful old rate, With the aid of Socialism for the poor men at his gate; This fine young German Emperor, all of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... had risen beside his chariot to predict disaster the colonel would have shriveled him with a contemptuous look. For the Consolidated Water Company had that day been intrenched more firmly than ever in its autocracy by a decision handed down from the Supreme Court. A city had hired the best of lawyers and had fought desperately for the right to have pure water. But the law, as expounded by the judges, had held as inexorable the provision that no city or town ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... exercised against him. His sense of justice then asserts itself, and he resents not getting his share of anything. He even will insist on being punished if he thinks punishment is due him. While revengeful if imposed upon, and bitter under the autocracy of cruelty, he has a great respect for firmness. And the Americans would do well to remember that in governing the Filipino, kindness should be mingled with ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Russia. I think every one who has been in Russia recently is convinced that the existing Government is stable. It may undergo internal developments, and might easily, but for Lenin, become a Bonapartist military autocracy. But this would be a change from within—not perhaps a very great change—and would probably do little to alter the economic system. From what I saw of the Russian character and of the opposition parties, I became persuaded that ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... all. It is so easy of operation; it is so simple and direct—one brain, one will, one law, with no foolish back-talk, bickerings, murmurings, mutinies, letters to the paper. A democracy has it beaten, of course, on the basis of liberty, but there is much to be said in favor of an autocracy in ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... complete democracy—in fact, it is not a democracy at all in the lower grades; it is or should be a benevolent autocracy. The teacher within the schoolroom is the law-making body, the interpreter of the laws, and the executor of the laws. The good teacher does all this justly and kindly, and so elicits the admiration, ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... was only a sham attack, an imitation battle, an exhibition drill. For the moment a curtain had been lifted and they were permitted to see something of the glory, the passion, the horror of democracy's struggle against the armed autocracy ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... of this subject early recognizes that the man at the physical task should not be unnecessarily distracted by the vexing problems of planning and directing the work. In some way this does not seem to fit a democracy, but rather seems to lead toward autocracy. However, let us keep in mind that specialization is essential, not only at each physical task, but at the tasks at which there may be expended a combination of the mental and physical, and also at those tasks that are wholly mental, and that a division should be ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... the brilliant days of the Empire, despite his autocracy, his militarism and his arrogance, represented "the people," the advanced spirit of the Revolution; his downfall had meant a return to the old regime—the regime of feudal rights, of farmers general, of heavy ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... here, some twoscore or so at first, the rabid patriots of this poor, downtrodden France. They talked of Liberty mostly, with many oaths and curses against the tyrants, and then started a tyranny, an autocracy, ten thousand times more awful than any wielded by ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and true to life, of the democracy of despotism in which the express and combined will of the people is the only absolute law. Hence Russian autocracy is forced into repeated wars for the possession of Constantinople which, in the present condition of the Empire, would be an unmitigated evil to her and would be only too glad to see a Principality of Byzantium ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... "Why is the autocracy of the proletariat better than the one already in force? And what wild, barbarous watchwords they have! 'Who is not with us, he is against us!' 'Who is master, let him get down from his ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... displayed the keenest interest in what I told him about Kerensky and the new order that I had seen in the making. I heard him speak at a Russian Fair in London. The whole burden of his utterance was the hope that the Slav would achieve discipline and organization. At that time Russia redeemed from autocracy looked to be a bulwark of Allied victory. The night we talked about Russia at Capetown she had become the prey of red terror and the plaything of ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... practically all our disinterested and thoughtful supporters of the war feel deeply uneasy about the Russian alliance. At all events, I should be trifling grossly with the facts of the situation if I pretended that the most absolute autocracy in Europe, commanding an inexhaustible army in an invincible country with a dominion stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, may not, if it achieves a military success against the most dreaded military Power in Europe, be stirred to ambitions far more formidable ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... to, the treacherous act. In the light of the horrors that are occurring in Russia at the present time, it is not improbable that there was treachery; and that when it was discovered, suspicion centred on certain persons, who were, in accordance with Muscovite autocracy, dispatched without ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... all, and, secondly, why they had been allowed to depart almost unscathed. In this atmosphere the usual badinage of Question-time passed almost unnoticed. Mr. BALFOUR gave a neat summary of Germany's propagandist methods. "In Russia, where autocracy has been abolished, it declares that we are secretly fostering reaction; in Spain, where there is a constitutional monarchy, it proclaims that we are aiming at revolution. Both statements are untrue; ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... should cease to be a court of the last resort. But the strangest contradictions were at this date to be found in the minds of men. The name of Emperor, a remnant of Roman despotism, was still associated with an idea of autocracy, which, though it formed a ridiculous inconsistency with the privileges of the Estates, was nevertheless argued for by jurists, diffused by the partisans of despotism, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... German people, a character which has been gravely altered by the subsidence of the ancient upper stratum of society, and by long privations and miseries. The Germans of Tacitus were a freedom-loving and turbulent people; of this not a trace is left. Any one who did not recognize under the autocracy that we care little for self-determination and self-responsibility may do so under the revolution, which merely arises out of an alteration in external conditions. We are not even yet a nation, but an association of interests and oppositions; a German Irredenta, as it has been and ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... his. official duties at Isabella. Bartholomew, who was at another part of the coast collecting tribute, had sent a caravel laden with cotton to Isabella, and well-meaning James had her drawn up on the beach. Roldan took the opportunity to represent this innocent action as a sign of the intolerable autocracy of the Columbus family, who did not even wish a vessel to be in a condition to sail for Spain with news of their misdeeds. Insolent Roldan formally asks James to send the caravel to Spain with supplies; poor James refuses and, perhaps being at bottom afraid of Roldan ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... code of despotism which the continental powers adopted for Europe and which they later proposed to extend to America. It was an attempt to make the world safe for autocracy. Wellington's protest at Verona marked the final withdrawal of England from the alliance which had overthrown Napoleon and naturally inclined her toward a rapprochement with the United States. The aim of the Holy Allies, as the remaining ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... Parliament a palatable yet not ineffective scheme of Reform, raise him above the other law-givers of the eighteenth century in the grandeur of his aims if not in his actual achievements. By the India Bill of 1784 he reconciled the almost incompatible claims of eastern autocracy and western democracy. If he failed to carry fiscal and Parliamentary Reform, it was due less to tactical defects on his part than to prejudice and selfishness among those whom he ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... year of 1882—in which Emma Goldman, then in her 13th year, arrived in St. Petersburg. A struggle for life and death between the autocracy and the Russian intellectuals swept the country. Alexander II had fallen the previous year. Sophia Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch, Michailov, the heroic executors of the death sentence upon the tyrant, had then entered the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... European state both in mediaeval and modern times to reach a high degree of national efficiency. At a period when the foreign policies of the continental states were exclusively but timidly dynastic, and when their domestic organizations illustrated the disadvantages of a tepid autocracy, Great Britain had entered upon a foreign policy of national colonial expansion and was building up a representative national domestic organization. After several centuries of revolutionary disturbance the English had regained their national balance, without sacrificing any of the time-honored ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... intellectual slavery of the masses and the insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... could not adapt himself to Belgian manners, found some moral support in the presence of his wife, and, later on, of his son and heir. But no link of sympathy and understanding could exist between the haughty and taciturn Spaniard and his genial subjects, between the bigoted incarnation of autocracy and the liberty-loving population of the Netherlands, so that even the personal element contributed to render the task of ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... order his powerful subjects and give poor men protection against them. Their civil law procedure, influenced by Roman imperial maxims, served to enhance the royal power and dignity, and helped to build up the Tudor autocracy. ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard |
