Selected authority quotes

1. This is The Rock's show! This is SmackDown!

2. 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.

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

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

5. What luck for rulers that men do not think.

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

7. 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.

8. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

9. 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.

10. 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.

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

12. 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.

13. The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

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

15. Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

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

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

18. 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.

19. Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

20. 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.

21. Please, sir, I want some more.

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

23. 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.

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

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

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

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

30. 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.

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

32. 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.

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

34. 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.

35. Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

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

40. 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.

41. I am as sober as a judge.

42. In reality, the world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are.

43. In our 'age of the expert' the expert has his constituency - those who have a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining the consensus at a high level has, after all, made him an expert.

44. When you meet the president, you ask yourself, 'How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less president?'

45. A public can only arrive at enlightenment slowly. Through revolution, the abandonment of personal despotism may be engendered and the end of profit-seeking and domineering oppression may occur, but never a true reform of the state of mind. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones, will serve as the guiding reins of the great, unthinking mass. All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The pastor: Don't argue, believe!

46. Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

47. I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

48. There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.

49. One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.

50. The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.

51. C'est toi qui l'as nomme.

52. Am I a god? I see so clearly!

53. I can never consent to being dictated to.

54. In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church.

55. There was this vicious woman [at school], a teacher. If you weren't in her little handpicked clique, you were ridiculed and picked on. She was brutal and unjust. One day she told me to do something, I can't remember what. Her tone was nasty. She got very loud in my face in front of the rest of the class and tried to embarrass me. I saw what she was doing, that she was trying to ridicule me. I turned around and walked away. As I did, I dropped my drawers and mooned her. She went out of her mind. Then of course I was brought before the dean and suspended for a couple of weeks. At that time it was coming anyway. I knew my days were numbered. (2004)

56. Friar! What a strange name. I don't remember having created such a thing! (God speaking to the angel Gabriel)

57. There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.

58. To say the least - this is a disloyal, non-objective attitude towards our Party and our country. It's a consequence of a terrible delusion that has been blown up to monstrous dimensions in order to destroy the reputation of our Party and its leadership, to take away the glory of the Yugoslavian people and their struggle. To trample everything great that our nation achieved with great sacrifices and blood loss - in order to break the unity of our Party, which represents a guarantee for successful development of socialism in our country and for the establishment of happiness of our people.

59. Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer?

60. As for the clergy - No - If I say a word against them, I'll be shot. - I have no desire, - and besides, if I had, - I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject, - with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account, - and therefore, 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up, - and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.

61. Communism is like one big phone company. If you get too rank with them, you'll wind up with a dixie cup and a thread.

62. When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.

63. I don't like being told what to do.

64. Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

65. By God's grace, I know Satan very well. If Satan can turn God's Word upside down and pervert the Scriptures, what will he do with my words -- or the words of others?

66. Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine.

67. When Henry Mulcahy, a middle-aged instructor of literature at Jocelyn College, Jocelyn, Pennsylvania, unfolded the President's letter and became aware of its contents, he gave a sudden sharp cry of impatience and irritation, as if such interruptions could positively be brooked no longer.

68. What is a throne? - a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state- I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public-people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.

69. A great reserve and severity of manners are necessary for the command of those who are older than ourselves.

70. Popes have committed too many absurdities to create a belief in their infallibility.

71. So you think the police foresees and knows everything. The police invents more than it discovers.

72. The aristocracy has the advantage of concentrating the power of Government into less dangerous hands than those of the ignorant multitude.

73. They think I am stern, even hardhearted. So much the better- this makes it unnecessary for me to justify my reputation. My firmness is taken for callousness. I shall not complain, since this notion is responsible for the good order that is prevailing, so that there is nothing that needs to be repressed.

74. We cannot escape from the arbitrariness of the judge, unless we place ourselves under the despotism of the law.

75. A leader ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred.

76. There is no arguing with Johnson: for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

77. Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pass by.

78. I would like to emphasize here, on Al-Arabiya TV, that I place Sheik Osama on the same level as my father, and I love him perhaps even more than my father.

79. Tantra says there is nobody above you whom you have to follow, through whom you have to get your pattern.

80. I would have left all the Jews in Germany, but put them on an alien status, under alien law, and naturally closed them out of jobs like doctor or lawyer. But why execute them? In that way, strong Jewish influence would have been cast aside and there would be no need for atrocities. Whenever we would have discussions in our own circle, I would mention my solution, whereupon Himmler would say to me, 'Pohl, you are too soft.' Therefore, I did my best to keep out of the whole final solution of the Jewish problem.

81. I can only be responsible for my orders. I cannot be responsible for all the acts of Himmler.

82. Pohl I did not know at all except, of course, that I had heard of him and perhaps I did see him occasionally at the Fuhrer's headquarters or at large meetings. But that a man could be in charge of all the concentration camps in Germany, Himmler's right-hand man without a doubt, making him one of the great criminals of our age - what sort of man is he? Does he talk? Does he proclaim innocence like Kaltenbrunner? I really can't understand such people.

83. I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling on an ammunition dump, but he didn't. Instead, he continued to exhibit that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they're fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes.

84. As is so often the case with butlers, there was a good deal of Beach. Julius Caesar, who liked to have men about him who were fat, would have taken to him at once. He was a man who had made two chins grow where only one had been before, and his waistcoat swelled like the sail of a racing yacht.

85. God is 'the Supreme Fascist.'

86. You were heard in silence, so some of you scumbags on the front bench should wait a minute until you hear the responses from me.

87. Robert Arctor halted. Stared at them, at the straights in their fat suits, their fat ties, their fat shoes, and he thought, Substance D can't destroy their brains; they have none.

88. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance.

89. 'As a traditional leader, I take slight that, at times, our traditional authority have been abused and exploited by the powers that be. While our traditional authority has always been respected, sadly at times, it has also been abused.'

90. Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

91. It's obvious that in an intelligent educated audience such as this university, I stress this university. Who saw fit to give them accreditation?

92. Even the Lord had skeptical members of His Party.

93. I have conferred with the superintendent of police this morning and I gave him instructions that an order be issued by him immediately and under his signature to shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a molotov cocktail in his hand.

94. There wasn't any shoot to kill order. That was a fabrication.

95. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority.

96. My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist... When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band - a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits. 'If you can show me,' Ticky answered with simple diginity, 'where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not.' See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.

97. Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure 'good' government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare - most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the 'backseat-driver syndrome.'

98. Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.

99. Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

100. The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it's lovely work if you can stomach it.