Quotes About Authority

They are my slaves [ books and papers ] and they must serve me as I please.

The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws.

Illi unum consilium habent et virtutem et potestatem suam bestiae tradunt. Et ne quis possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet characterem aut nomen bestiae aut numerum nominis ejus.

The new era differs from the old chiefly in that the lash begins to imagine itself possessed of genius.

representative government is] deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament

Society behaves just as exclusively as the state, only in a more polite form: it does not throw you out, but it makes it so uncomfortable for you that you go out of your own will.

Government hears only its own voice … It knows it hears only its own voice and yet it deceives itself that it hears the people's voice.

If the State is to have reality as the ethical, self-conscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into several churches. Then only is the State seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form.

The medieval proverb nulle terre sans seigneur [There is no land without its lord. — Ed.] is thereby replaced by that other proverb, l'argent n'a pas de maître [Money knows no master. — Ed.], wherein is expressed the complete domination of dead matter over man.

First to control the people, first control the media." Karl Marx

Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it

Whoever controls Germany, controls Europe.

The ruling ideas of each age have [n]ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The man who was speaking had a degree in jargon and a doctorate in nonsense.

So, what do they pay you for...exactly? Slapped around. Tied up. Beaten. Given orders, made to do things. What kind of things? You know. No, I can't even begin to imagine. Lick my boots, crawl on floor, eat like dog. Nothing useful, then, like hoovering?

She was twenty-eight but already jaded. Twenty-eight seemed a particularly unsatisfactory age. She was no longer young and yet no one ever seemed to take her seriously as an adult. People still told her what to do all the time, it was infuriating. Her only power seemed to be over her own children and even that was limited by endless negotiation.

That man scorches with his brightness, who overpowers inferior capacities, yet he shall be revered when dead.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

Congress should know how to levy taxes, and if it doesn't know how to collect them, then a man is a fool to pay the taxes.

Take caution in your tone, commander. I'm a fair man, but this -- heat is making me absolutely crazy.

Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.

Men still control the news, both on and off camera.

They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.

He who trusts a secret to his servant makes his own man his master.