On Kingship to the King of Cyprus Quotes

“Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God, as we have said above. Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

“So, it is natural to man that he should live in a society of many. More fully: in other animals, there is imprinted a natural inclination toward all the things which are useful or harmful to them, as the sheep naturally esteems the wolf to be its enemy. . . But man has a natural knowledge of those things which are necessary for his life only in common, as he, so to speak, strives through reason to move from universal principles to those things which are necessary for human life. But it is not possible for one man to attain, through his own reason, to everything of this sort. And so it is necessary to man that he live in a multitude, that one might be helped by another.”
― Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

“The tyrant, moreover, loses the surpassing beatitude which is due as a reward to kings and, which is still more serious, brings upon himself great suffering as a punishment. For if the man who despoils a single man, or casts him into slavery, or kills him, deserves the greatest punishment (death in the judgment of men, and in the judgment of God eternal damnation), how much worse tortures must we consider a tyrant deserves, who on all sides robs everybody, works against the common liberty of all, and kills whom he will at his merest whim?”
― Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

“It is not unjust that the king be deposed or have his power restricted by that same multitude if, becoming a tyrant, he abuses the royal power. It must not be thought that such a multitude is acting unfaithfully in deposing the tyrant, even though it had previously subjected itself to him in perpetuity, because he himself has deserved that the covenant with his subjects should not be kept, since, in ruling the multitude, he did not act faithfully as the office of a king demands.”
― Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus

“If an unjust government is carried on by one man alone, who seeks his own benefit from his rule and not the good of the multitude subject to him, such a ruler is called a tyrant—a word derived from strength —because he oppresses by might instead of ruling by justice. Thus among the ancients all powerful men were called tyrants. If an. unjust government is carried on, not by one but by several, and if they be few, it is called an oligarchy, that is, the rule of a few. This occurs when a few, who differ from the tyrant only by the fact that they are more than one, oppress the people by means of their wealth. If, finally, the bad government is carried on by the multitude, it is called a democracy, i.e. control by the populace, which comes about when the plebeian people by force of numbers oppress the rich. In this way the whole people will be as one tyrant.”
― Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship to the King of Cyprus