Quotes About Authority

What is it exactly that I'm allowed to do with you?" I asked. "Anything you want.

We're detectives . . . We can do anything we want.

There are times, too, when the law doesn't give a damn who gets caught beneath its wheels.

He was Lieutenant again. Which meant he was so screwed. Sam or even Roger would have had at least a slim chance of talking her out of bringing him in, but not Lieutenant Starrett.

Y'all can think of me as the voice of God. I say it, you obey it, or there'll be hell to pay.

She'd also prepared by wearing her hair combed back severely from her face, and putting on her stiffest, highestcollared business suit. She all but carried a riding crop.

I'm going to carry you now," he told her, "so we can move even faster. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Any response from you is unnecessary and unwelcome.

So it's you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.

No. Now, shut up and eat your pears.

Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.

I can hear President Snow's voice in my head. 'On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the capital, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.

Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry as we are for fresh meat as anyone. In fact, they're among our best customers.

I mourn my old life here. We barely scraped by, but I knew where I fit in, I knew what my place was in the tightly interwoven fabric that was our life. I wish I could go back to it because, in retrospect, it seems so secure compared to now, when I am so rich and famous and so hated by the authorities in the capitol.

If it's true, why do they leave us to live like this? With the hunger and the killings and the Games?" And suddenly I hate this imaginary underground city of District 13 and those who sit by, watching us die. They're no better than the Capitol.

Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.

We control it," he said quietly. "If the war's impossible to end, then we have to control it indefinitely. Just as we do now. With the Peacekeepers occupying the districts, with strict laws, and with reminders of who's in charge, like the Hunger Games. In any scenario, it's preferable to have the upper hand, to be the victor rather than the defeated.

Just remember, stealing's punishable by death

They were both after all, still children whose lives were dictated by powers above them.

In other words, I step out of line and we're all dead.

The ability to control things. Yes, that was what he'd loved best of all.

In my mind, President Snow should be viewed in front of marble pillars hung with oversized flags. It's jarring to see him surrounded by the ordinary objects in the room. Like taking the lid off a pot and finding a fanged viper instead of stew.

I WILL KILL SNOW.

You've no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they're not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn't give you that right. Having more weapons doesn't give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn't give you that right. Nothing does.

Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need.