Quotes About Authority

I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.

Believing things on authority only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority... Every historical event in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada.

Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement - at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist. Only, instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, it demands it from the continued action of all.

Sometimes you have positional authority, and that is very hopeful. But the reality of it is the nation responds to moral authority, when we believe that our president has the entire nation`s best interests at heart.

I talk with the authority of failure - Ernest with the authority of success. We could never sit across the same table again.

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust.

To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.

I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.

I think that Canadians have an incredible reverence for authority and regard for authority, and I think one of the healthy ways that it's challenged is through questioning it, through the polite hostility of comedy.

A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are.

Authority can mean different things to different people. For example, some document or other may be authoritative for particular group even though it's not reliable. It's just that the group has accepted that document as authoritative for their group. And some documents are truthful and reliable but they are ignored, so they have no authority for that particular group.

It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority-even oppressive authority-for it was less painful for them than uncertainty.

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

When an individual wishes to stand in opposition to authority, he does best to find support for his position from others in his group. The mutual support provided by men for each other is the strongest bulwark we have against the excesses of authority.

What kind of authority can there be for an 'Apostle' who, unlike the other Apostles, had never been prepared for the Apostolic office in Jesus' own school but had only later dared to claim the Apostolic office on the basis of his own authority? The only question comes to be how the apostle Paul appears in his Epistles to be so indifferent to the historical facts of the life of Jesus....He bears himself but little like a disciple who has received the doctrines and the principles which he preaches from the Master whose name he bears.

Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop.

It's up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can't put our spirits in prison.

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.

If the Church has no the authority to tell its members that they may not engage in homosexual practices, then it has no authority at all. And if we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves.

Blanche is written with a terrible authority, the authority that comes from artistic necessity when the writer is compelled to write by his demon, rather than by his agent or promoter.

The modern mind will accept nothing on authority, but will accept anything on no authority. Say that the Bible or the Pope says so and it will be dismissed without further examination. But preface your remark with "I think I heard somewhere," or, try but fail to remember the name of some professor who might have said "such-and-such," and it will be immediately accepted as an unshakable fact.

It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.

The Magna Carta is an early reminder of the crucial difference between freedom and liberty. Liberty is freedom that is unique to humans, it is guaranteed by law. All animals are free, but in a system of humans total freedom is anarchy. Humans have thrived by letting a dominant authority regulate freedom. Liberty is a freedom that the authority has granted or has been persuaded to grant. For centuries, the state and the people have negotiated, peacefully and violently.

In varying degrees, the authority of the dharma was replaced by the authority of the guru, who came, in some traditions, to assume the role of the Buddha himself.

The common people feel themselves oppressed by the grasping of some, and their vanity is flattered by others. Fired with evil passions, they are no longer willing to submit to control, but demand that everything be subject to their authority. The invariable result is that government assumes the noble names of free and popular, but becomes in fact the most execrable thing, mob rule.

Merciful heaven, Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man, Dressed in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured His glassy essence--like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal.

To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government. . . The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed.

As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

The Parliament in Canada and the Congress in Washington do not have the authority to revoke the commandments of God, or to modify or amend them in any way.

If anyone dared to assert that the Pontiff had erred in this or that canonisation, we shall say that he is, if not a heretic, at least temerarious, a giver of scandal to the whole Church, an insulter of the saints, a favourer of those heretics who deny the Church's authority in canonizing saints, savouring of heresy by giving unbelievers an occasion to mock the faithful, the assertor of an erroneous opinion and liable to very grave penalties.

Inevitably in my career of 35 years, I was in one turnaround circumstance after another, and I was personally put in positions of significant responsibility but without complete authority over everyone that needed to be mobilized.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

You can become anything you want to be ... It's a matter of authority. Whatever a man's confidence, that's his capacity.

We have no other choice but to go on managing the conflict. We propose a stability plan: We want to strengthen the Palestinian Authority economically and establish mutual industrial zones and help them to develop independent energy capabilities, enabling the Palestinians to live their lives independently and have a future. This is where the European States should invest, not in NGOs that harm Israel.

Ow do you knock out a Denizen?" asked Suzy. "I tried it myself once or twice, but just hitting them never works." "It is not the force of the blow, but the authority with which it is delivered," quoth the raven.

I do not conceive that power is given to the President and Senate to dismember the empire, or to alienate any great, essential right. I do not think the whole legislative authority have this power. The exercise of the power must be consistent with the object of the delegation.

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

I don't use 'always do this,' 'never say that' and I never give advice because I'm not the end-all, be-all authority.

The two principles referred to are Authority and Liberty, and the names of the two schools of Socialistic thought which fully and unreservedly represent one or the other of them are, respectively, State Socialism and Anarchism.

It would be hard to conceive a system of instincts more nicely adjusted, where the constituents should represent or support one another better. The husband has an interest in protecting the wife, she in serving the husband. The weaker gains in authority and safety, the wilder and more unconcerned finds a help-mate at home to take thought of his daily necessities. Parents lend children their experience and a vicarious memory; children endow their parents with a vicarious immortality.

You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.

You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

I realized clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.

I did have a feeling then that the culture of factuality was so dominating that storytelling had lost all its authority.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

No authority can save us, no beliefs. If there is a God, all can find Him. No one needs to be told it is warm; all can discover it for themselves. So it should be with God. He should be a fact in the consciousness of every person.

The word of God is definitely above culture, in terms of what or who should have authority in our lives. However, we must remember that we are within culture, and our calling in Christ is to play our part in the redemption and transformation of individuals and cultures. I believe the recent history of the religious subculture teaches all too clearly that unless we are moving forward in seeking the genuine transformation of culture, then we are standing still and it is transforming us.