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Alphabetized by author

• Royalty is a Government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a Government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting things.
  • Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution (1867)

• Constitutional monarchies, through their structure, avoid those four republican perils : excessive rigidity, as in the American system, which is reduced to near paralysis whenever the President is seriously threatened with impeachment; political conflict and competition between the Head of State, Prime Minister and Ministers , a hallmark of the French Fifth Republic (an inherently unstable model curiously followed in a number of countries); extreme instability, which often haunted the Latin versions of Westminster; and regular resort to the rule of the street to solve conflict, which permeates those systems which live under the shadow of the French revolution.
  • Professor David Flint, in The Role of the Sovereign

• Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution — perhaps the first modern political institution.
  • Adam Gopnik, in The New Yorker (29 September 1997)

• A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.
  • Robert A. Heinlein in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)

• A king is a king, not because he is rich and powerful, not because he is a successful politician, not because he belongs to a particular creed or to a national group. He is King because he is born. And in choosing to leave the selection of their head of state to this most common denominator in the world- the accident of birth- Canadians implicitly proclaim their faith in human equality; their hope for the triumph of nature over political manoeuvre, over social and financial interest; for the victory of the human person.
  • Jacques Monet, in "The Canadian Monarchy" in The West and the Nation : Essays in Honour of W. L. Morton (1976), edited by Ramsay Cook, and Carl Berger. p. 324

• The monarchy is a political referee, not a political player, and there is a lot of sense in choosing the referee by a different principle from the players. It lessens the danger that the referee might try to start playing.
  • Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell, as quoted in The Spectator (11 January 1997)

• I believe that the royal family are a focus of patriotism, of loyalty, of affection and of esteem. That is a rare combination, and we should value it highly.
  • Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a Civil List debate, in the House of Commons (24 July 1990)

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• Those who imagine that a politician would make a better figurehead than a hereditary monarch might perhaps make the acquaintance of more politicians.
  • Margaret Thatcher (November 1995)