Quotes About Authority

Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made And they're afraid that I'm afraid

no religion run by human beings should ever be trusted.

what the Agency does is ordered by the President and the NSC. The Agency neither makes decisions on policy nor acts on its own account. It is an instrument of the President ... to use in any way he pleases.

People are looking for someone to tell them what to do and whether what they're doing is good or bad.

In theatre, presence is the matrix of power; the postmodern theatre of resistance must therefore both expose the collusion of presence with authority and resist such collusion by refusing to establish itself as the charismatic Other.

A ruler who failed to manage China's waters didn't just risk social decay. He exposed himself to the charge that heaven itself had lost confidence in his capacity to rule. This idea is attributed to the Duke of Zhou

That's the kind of face you had - the kind that directed the world and made it beautiful.

I'm not for organizations much - they seem to run people more than people run them.

On all the important decisions, Judge Nelson ruled against the defense: he allowed in the evidence recovered from the bus station and from Richard's car and his sister Ruth's house.

Halpin did not want Ruth or Ruben in the courtroom and he demanded they leave. He said they were going to be witnesses and had no right sitting in on the proceedings. The judge told them to leave.

When Julian, who was big for his age, was fourteen, he stood up to his father, pulled the belt from his hand, and threw it on the ground. "You are not beating me anymore!" he proclaimed defiantly. This was a crime punishable by death in Camargo, Mexico, in 1944. A son did not defy his father. There were customs and regulations that had to be adhered to, but after that day, Jose Ramirez and his father did not beat Julian anymore.

Julian was introduced to the commandante of the Juarez Police. He immediately liked the way Julian looked and was pleased to hear he knew about the handling of guns from his time in the army. He was sworn in right away, given a uniform and a gun, and told to report for duty the next morning.

Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.

Galen's writings were the indisputable source of medical authority for more than a thousand years. "It is I, and I alone, who has revealed the true path of medicine," Galen wrote with his usual modesty. And yet Galen never conducted anything resembling a modern experiment. Why

Physicians and the institutions they controlled didn't want to let go of the idea that their judgment alone revealed the truth, so they kept doing what they did because they had always done it that way—and they were backed up by respected authority. They didn't need scientific validation. They just knew. Cochrane despised this attitude. He called it "the God complex.

There are two things that create, protect, and increase a sovereign's rule—soldiers and money—both being dependent on each other. Armies need money and money is acquired by the strength of arms. If you lose one, you lose the other. Caesar

These fasces were a praetor's visible symbol of the right to use force (hence our term fascism).

At last, his companions approached his bedside and implored him to name his successor: To whom do you leave your kingdom? They leaned close to hear his words. With great effort Alexander answered in a whisper: To the strongest. With that, the king of the world closed his eyes and breathed his last.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (1954)

A good way to avoid crimes of obedience is to assert one's personal authority and always take full responsibility for one's actions.23

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. —Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

Evil consists in intentionally behaving in ways that harm, abuse, demean, dehumanize, or destroy innocent others—or using one's authority and systemic power to encourage or permit others to do so on your behalf.

humanity can be transformed by power and by powerlessness. Underlying

At that moment, the Stanford Prison Experiment was changed into the Stanford Prison, not by any top-down formal declarations by the staff but by this bottom-up declaration from one of the prisoners themselves.