Noun
Government by the best citizens.
A ruling body composed of the best citizens.
A form a government, in which the supreme power is vested in the principal persons of a state, or in a privileged order; an oligarchy.
The nobles or chief persons in a state; a privileged class or patrician order; (in a popular use) those who are regarded as superior to the rest of the community, as in rank, fortune, or intellect.
Source: Webster's dictionaryI agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... Thomas Jefferson
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. G. K. Chesterton
Aristocracy is always cruel. Wendell Phillips
Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Thomas Jefferson
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. W. H. Auden