Quotes About Authority

How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.

Freedom is not possible without authority - otherwise it would turn into chaos and authority is not possible without freedom - otherwise it would turn into tyranny.

Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

Over the pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one's own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

When a new idea assaults the power of established authority, authority always screams out that morality has been affronted. It makes no difference if this idea is that the world is round or that women should vote or that the workers should control industry.

I was an ordinary boy at school, a young man. In fact, what did the headmaster once say? "You're constantly challenging those in authority; questioning and challenging those in authority." Which was not really the way I saw it. I felt there were questions that had to be answered, and things that weren't quite right.

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.

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.

We're going to protect and honor the Constitution, and I don't have the authority to set it aside.... If I had the authority to set it aside, this would be a dangerous government, and I wouldn't respect it.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

The Constitution, in addition to delegating certain enumerated powers to Congress, places whole areas outside the reach of Congress' regulatory authority. The First Amendment, for example, is fittingly celebrated for preventing Congress from "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion or "abridging the freedom of speech." The Second Amendment similarly appears to contain an express limitation on the government's authority.

The pre-war empire had been sufficiently informal and sufficiently cheap for Parliament to claim authority over it without having to concern itself too much about what this authority entailed. The post-war empire necessitated a much greater investment in administrative machinery and military force. This build-up of control had to be paid for, either by British taxpayers or by their colonists.

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I've pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid.

Remodeling defies the principles of modern commerce. You shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, yet these same people are constantly insinuating that you're cheap. (It reminded me of medicine, another area where you shell out great sums of money to people over whom you have no authority or power, who make you feel guilty for questioning a bill.) Construction workers are the blue-collar version of the snooty salespeople at Gucci who make $8 an hour but look down on you if you balk at a $400 alligator wallet.

There are reasons to have rules and regulations. That I understand. Authority is a different thing. Authority is to maintain its own position by increasing its power and domination over those people it is supposedly protecting.

Israel can make peace with an organization that seeks its destruction. That's Hamas. But Israel can make peace with the Palestinian Authority. It requires a lot of courage from both sides including President Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

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.

War and Authority are companions; Peace and Liberty are companions.

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.

I believe that there's a way to question authority with manners, with dignity. There's no reason to be rude about it.

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.

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.

Science is very vibrant. There are always new observations to be found. And it's all in the interest in challenging the authority that came before you. That's consistent with the punk rock ethos that suggests that you should not take what people say at face value.

Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities

The striking thing is that WHO doesn't really have the authority to do any of this. It can't tell governments what to do. It hires no vaccinators, distributes no vaccine. It is a small Geneva bureaucracy run by several hundred international delegates whose annual votes tell the organization what to do but not how to do it.…The only substantial resource that WHO has cultivated is information and expertise.

The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God, Whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

The origin of society, then, is to be sought, not in any natural right which one man has to exercise authority over another, but in the united consent of those who associate.

It is a mistake to believe that science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form to replace the religious catechism by something else, even a scientific one.

My mom was my English teacher in high school. So to be able to bend the rules and be the class clown and get to take on my religion, my mom, and my town all at the same time was glorious. I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit. If you're cracking a joke in school, it's sort of anti-authority, but it's in the nicest, "Please like me!" way.

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem.

It is by the Lord's stripes that we are healed, and it is through our own stripes that we, too, are given the authority for healing. In the place where the enemy wounds us, once we are healed, we are given the power to heal others.

In all teaching there must be a fusion of authority as an adult providing a stable framework for the children in one's care, and humility as another human being ready to educate an equal who may turn out to be a superior.

There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice.

We must always keep in mind all legitimate authority is from God, and is given for protection, provision, and peace.

If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know.

What right can give anyone authority to inflict torture upon a citizen when it is still unknown whether he is innocent or guilty?

Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

It seems fair to say that while the moral standards of the nineteenth century persisted almost unchanged into the twentieth, moral practices changed sharply, and that though the standards of the nineteenth century persisted the institutions that had sustained them and the sanctions that had enforced them lost influence and authority.

Authority, power, and wealth do not change a man; they only reveal him

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

I do think it's a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You're both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice.

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason

With 450,000 U. S. troops now in Vietnam, it is time that Congress decided whether or not to declare a state of war exists with North Vietnam. Previous congressional resolutions of support provide only limited authority. Although Congress may decide that the previously approved resolution on Vietnam given President Johnson is sufficient, the issue of a declaration of war should at least be put before the Congress for decision.

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