J.R.R. Tolkien

"My political beliefs lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy ... Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers."

"I am not a `democrat' only because `humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1995, p. 246)

"You can make the Ring into an allegory of our own time, if you like: and allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat evil power by power" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 121).

When Frodo offers him the Ring, the wise Gandalf cries:

"No! With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly! Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strenght to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused" (The Lord of the Rings, 2001, p. 60.)

Pearce quotes Tolkien as saying: It is no coincidence that The Shire is portrayed as an idyllic rural society with little formal government, while Mordor is quite emphatically an industrial, collectivistic slave-state.

Pearce quotes poet Charles Coulombe, "In an age which has seen an almost total rejection of the Faith on the part of the Civilisation she created, the loss of the Faith on the part of many lay Catholics, and apparent uncertainty among her hierarchy, Lord of the Rings assures us, both by its existence and its message, that the darkness cannot triumph forever."

"For Tolkien," writes Pearce, "Catholicism was not an opinion to which one subscribed but a reality to which one submitted . . . . Tolkien remained a Catholic for the simple if disarming reason that he believed Catholicism was true."