#monarchy

It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book On God] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.' Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as “karmic reassignment”) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)' I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot's Ghost and The Armies of the Night. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#capitalism #communism #democracy #devil #god

Something as curious as the monarchy won't survive unless you take account of people's attitudes. After all, if people don't want it, they won't have it. ↗

— Prince Charles

#account #after #attitudes #curious #monarchy

The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family. I find it very sad. ↗

— Steven Patrick Morrissey

#business #continue #enormous #excessive #family

Thatcher once said that if she were a visitor from Mars required to create a constitutional system, "I would set up ... a hereditary monarchy, wonderfully trained, in duty and in leadership which understands example, which is always there, which is above politics, for which the whole nation has an affection and which is a symbol of patriotism. ↗

— Sally Bedell Smith

#margaret-thatcher #monarchy #queen-elizabeth-ii #the-queen #leadership

The people under our system, like the king in a monarchy, never dies. ↗

— Martin Van Buren

#king #like #monarchy #never #our

The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making the corpses dance. ↗

— Sue Townsend

#corpses #dance #finished #making #monarchy

If you look at Shakespeare's history plays, what the setting of monarchy allows is this extraordinary intensification of emotions and predicament. ↗

— Tom Hooper

#emotions #extraordinary #history #intensification #look

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. ↗

— John Adams

#bloody #commit #democracy #did #either

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy. ↗

— Friedrich Engels

#class #democratic #democratic republic #instrument #less

Then this will only prove again and again, that Monarchy in Germany is he longer capable of a national act. ↗

— Ferdinand Lassalle

#again #capable #germany #longer #monarchy