{"quotes":[{"text":"Big government = oligarchy. Simple equation. Big government = loss of representation.","author":"A.E. Samaan","tags":["big-government","libertarian","libertarianism","liberty","oligarchy","representation","representatives"],"id":7258,"author_id":"A.E.+Samaan"},{"text":"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.","author":"M.B. Dallocchio","tags":["colonialism","corruption","exploitation","government","military","oligarchy","plutocracy","trauma","war"],"id":46195,"author_id":"M.B.+Dallocchio"},{"text":"There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.","author":"Howard Zinn","tags":["democracy","government","oligarchy","plutocracy"],"id":67699,"author_id":"Howard+Zinn"},{"text":"So nobody must be allowed to think at all. Down with the public schools! Children must be drilled mentally by quarter-educated herdsmen, whose wages would stop at the first sign of disagreement with the bosses. For the rest, deafen the whole world with senseless clamour. Mechanize everything! Give nobody a chance to think. Standardize 'amusement.' The louder and more cacophonous, the better! Brief intervals between one din and the next can be filled with appeals, repeated 'till hypnotic power gives them the force of orders, to buy this or that product of the 'Business men' who are the real power in the State. Men who betray their country as obvious routine.The history of the past thirty years is eloquent enough, one would think. What these sodden imbeciles never realize is that a living organism must adapt itself intelligently to its environment, or go under at the first serious change of circumstance.","author":"Aleister Crowley","tags":["1944","bread-and-circus","control","corporatism","noise","oligarchy","yoga"],"id":72675,"author_id":"Aleister+Crowley"},{"text":"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.","author":"bell hooks","tags":["democracy","equality","oligarchy"],"id":76874,"author_id":"bell+hooks"},{"text":"Money has replaced the vote.","author":"Chris Hedges","tags":["capitalism","democracy","oligarchy","voting"],"id":94688,"author_id":"Chris+Hedges"},{"text":"We are in a prison of our own minds holding our own chains around us. We create our oligarchs and fight for their right to oppress us.","author":"Heather Marsh","tags":["communism","democracy","governance","oligarchy","politics-observation"],"id":157143,"author_id":"Heather+Marsh"},{"text":"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!","author":"Eliza Parsons","tags":["disgrace","economy","greed","money","nobility","oligarchy","society","vanity","vice","wealth"],"id":181722,"author_id":"Eliza+Parsons"},{"text":"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;.","author":"Aristotle","tags":["aristocracy","democracy","monarchy","oligarchy","timocracy","tiranny"],"id":183315,"author_id":"Aristotle"},{"text":"Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.","author":"Alice Walker","tags":["democracy","oligarchy","plutocracy","ruling-class"],"id":198527,"author_id":"Alice+Walker"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}