"The King is an absolute monarch, and I mean absolute. Whatever he says, goes. There’s no council of nobles, no senate, nothing that remotely challenges the King’s authority. He’s got courtiers and bureaucrats, sure, but the whole empire is essentially his own private property, to rule as he pleases. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. Certainly such an arrangement always has been, in historical times. No empire can hope to have an unbroken string of capable rulers. This king or that one might be all right, and maybe as much as a century can go along without any troublemakers reaching the throne. But sooner or later some madman is bound to come along, a Nero or a Caligula or a Hitler, somebody who won’t be able to handle absolute power, who runs amok and causes terrible chaos."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Fantasy authorsScience fiction authors from the United StatesNovelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesPeople from New York City
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 5 (p. 51)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Silverberg
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Robert Silverberg
117 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Robert Silverberg →
Related Quotes
"Never pass by a chance to shut up."
"What value is lineage to a drowning man?"
"Anything big and strange always upsets the people in power."
"May I be struck dead for saying this if I don’t mean it with all my heart: I wish the Lord and all his prophets would…"
"Beauty is a magnet: repels some, attracts many, leaves no one unmoved."
"“Moas aren’t very bright,” Gracchus answers. “That’s one good reason why they became extinct.”"
"Architecturally, the town looked like the worst of all possible cheap-and-sleazy tract developments, but the psychic …"
"Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been."
"Autobiography. Apparently one should not name the names of those one has been to bed with, or give explicit figures o…"
"Not all lawyers are annoying. Some are dead."