Quotes About Authority

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).

The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today's employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.

Religion isn't so much about telling man that there is one God as about preventing man from thinking that he is God.

Someone who has been employed for a while is giving you strong evidence of submission.

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it.

But bankers used to be subjected to Hammurabi's rule. The tradition in Catalonia was to behead bankers in front of their own banks

Modernity starts with the state monopoly on violence, and ends with the state's monopoly on fiscal irresponsibility.

To become a successful philosopher king, it is much better to start as a king than as a philosopher

Yet they believe blindly in the stock market, and in the abilities of their pension plan manager. Why do they do so? Because they accept that this is what people should do with their savings, because experts tell them so. The doubt their own sense, but not for a second do they doubt their automatic purchases in the stock market.

Humans will believe anything you say provided you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners.

A king, angry at his son, swore that he would crush him with a large stone.

by creating bureaucracies, we put civil servants in a position to make decisions based on abstract and theoretical matters, with the illusion that they will be making them in a rational, accountable way.

Cabdrivers did not believe that they understood as much as learned people—really, they were not the experts and they knew it. Nobody knew anything, but elite thinkers thought that they knew more than the rest because they were elite thinkers, and if you're a member of the elite, you automatically know more than the nonelite.

My biggest problem with the educational system lies precisely in that it forces students to squeeze explanations out of subject matters and shames them for withholding judgment, for uttering the "I don't know." Why

Mother Nature is not perfect, but has so far proven smarter than humans, certainly much smarter than biologists. So my approach is to combine evidence-based research (stripped of biological theory), with an a priori that Mother Nature has more authority than anyone.

He will be resisted by the older ones

La burocracia es una estructura mediante la cual una persona es convenientemente separada de las consecuencias de sus actos.

Let us not forget something embedded in the U.S. Constitution: the president is commander in chief.

let governments predict (it makes officials feel better about themselves and justifies their existence) but do not set much store by what they say. Remember that the interest of these civil servants is to survive and self-perpetuate—not to get to the truth.

Do not question his procedure, only his confidence.

Sanallinen uhka on aidon voimattomuuden sertifikaatti.

that we depend on them for what information we need to obtain.

Beware of precise plans by government. Let government predict: it makes them feel better about themselves and justifies their existence.

The incentive of a regulator is to have complex regulation. Again, the insiders are the enemies of the less-is-more rule.