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“Russian bolshevism, replacing eastern Christendom by the grim religiosity of Marx, produced a caricature of the evangelical counsels with many a diabolical aspect. There is a good deal of “communism” in monasteries and convents, yet this is based upon a voluntary renunciation of perfect human rights. On account of our free will we can make supreme sacrifices which ennobles our very existence. Bolshevism on the other hand forces us brutally into a parody of monastic life amidst fellow monks and fellow nuns who hate their habit and sigh under the ferocious tyranny of their pseudo-abbot. This evil distortion of an otherwise Christian ideal is more satanic than wanton, a thoroughly pagan and diabolic opposition to Christian existence. This explains also the reason why the Vatican has found stronger words against “altruistic” bolshevism than against egoistic capitalism”
― Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, The Menace of The Herd: Or, Procrustes at Large

“The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes Titus or Marcus Aurelius; the people is often Nero, and never Marcus Aurelius.”
― Antoine de Rivarol

“The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by limiting office to men of "trained skill".

Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers.

"The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not be reason."

Thus democratic government becomes a procession of brief-lived demagogues, and men of worth are loath to enter lists where they must be judged and rated by their inferiors.

Sooner or later the more capable men rebel against such a system, though they be in a minority.

"Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies"; people at last prefer tyranny to chaos.

Equality of power is an unstable condition men are by nature unequal; and "he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.”
― Frederich Schiller