827 Authority Quotes

Citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offences, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.

We have to put a stop to the idea that it is a part of everybody's civil rights to say whatever he pleases.

The heart of government, coated with whatever velvet gloves you want to put on it, is a mailed fist of force and coercion.

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.

It was settled by the Constitution, the laws, and the whole practice of the government that the entire executive power is vested in the President of the United States.

The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.

Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?

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. Whoso knows what these two schools want and how they propose to get it understands the Socialistic movement. For, just as it has been said that there is no half-way house between Rome and Reason, so it may be said that there is no half-way house between State Socialism and Anarchism.

The Anarchists never have claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow authority.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained.

A baby is born into this world in a state of fear. Total paranoia and awareness. He sees the world with eyes not used yet. As he grows up, his parents lay all this stuff on him. They tell him, when they should be letting him tell them. Let the children lead you.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

All the excitements of a prohibited book had their usual effect, one of which, as always, is to expose the fact that the censors don't know what they are talking about.

Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason.

The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

If a person, in a position of authority, wants someone to believe a lie, usually all they have to do is tell it to them. If they want someone to believe a ridiculous lie, all they have to do is tell it to them enough.

Whether you actually can or can't fight city hall is of little relevance. Either way, when the need arises, you must!

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

Between the Pope and air conditioning, I'd choose air conditioning.

To deny that in a child after baptism sin remains is to treat with contempt both Paul and Christ.

Know your role and shut your mouth!

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

To take those fools in clerical garb seriously is to show them too much honor.

Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.

He who serves our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.

The world of knowledge takes a crazy turn When teachers themselves are taught to learn.

The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting.

The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand.

Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, 'taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power.' History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration.

'I think I'd make a better president than George Bush. I'll tell you what, George Bush and Dick Cheney have been to jail more times than I have, and I used to shoot heroin, now what does that tell you?'

No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.

This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.

We can either have a free Parliament or a free people. Personal freedom requires that all authority is restrained by long-run principles which the opinion of the people approves.

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change 'orderly.'

The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.

If you want to lose your faith, make friends with a priest.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don't have as many people who believe it.

The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear - I'm a commander guy.

They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority.

Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy's house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded- after all, the cop was protecting us.

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

'Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.'

I have only one eye,- I have a right to be blind sometimes . . . I really do not see the signal!

Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.

'Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted. . . [T]wo or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.''

That which concerns the mystery of the King's power is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of Princes, and to take away the mystical reverence that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.

I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.

I want the seals of power and place, The ensigns of command, Charged by the people's unbought grace, To rule my native land. Nor crown, nor scepter would I ask But from my country's will, By day, by night, to ply the task Her cup of bliss to fill.

It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational elites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.

I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet. But at the end, that article wasn't very complimentary, because the author suggested that I wasn't doing a very good job, and that I ought to be replaced by a 'professional.' Of course, there isn't any 'God of the Internet.' The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together.

Orthodox Jews, or, as they are known in the Talmud, the Really Chosen Ones, are committed to the idea that the entire Torah was dictated by God verbatim to Moses at Mount Sinai... Other forms of Judaism dispute this claim, although it does explain certain passages in the first Torah, such as, 'I'm sorry, am I boring you?' and 'What do you like better, Moses, Lord Almighty or Big Hoohah?'

'Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.'

The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, 'There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.'

The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states.

When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect - but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate - may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical - always think for yourself.

Any community's arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any.

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'

Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.

If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, 'You're an asshole,' which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, 'That's idiotic,' when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job.

This guy Pat Robertson obviously wants to be a prophet so bad. I wonder if he walks around at home dressed up in a bed sheet, talking Aramaic, maybe parting the waters in the bathtub occasionally, just to keep in practice?

Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third - ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] - may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

Moviegoers like to believe that those they have made stars are great actors. People used to say that Gary Cooper was a fine actor - probably because when they looked in his face they were ready to give him their power of attorney.

No man ever did, nor ever shall, truly go forth to convert the nations, nor to prophesy in the present state of witnesses against Antichrist, but by the gracious inspiration and instigation of the Holy Spirit of God. ... I know no other True Sender, but the most Holy Spirit.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

'If I hear Bowie Kuhn say just once more he's doing something for the betterment of baseball, I'm going to throw-up.'

Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

My duty is to obey orders.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.