Quotes About Authority

It's as exhausting as dealing with an early-stage dementia sufferer—one with a trillion-pound budget and nuclear-weapons-release authority.

Revolutions (she'd long since learned) ran on committees just like any other government, once you got past the screaming-and-shooting stage.

The idiot child they've placed on the throne does not impress with his acumen.

She could ace the North Circular in a jacked Toyota Tercel faster than Sabine Schmitz could lap the Nürburgring in a Transit van, and the only times the plod had got on her tail she'd left them, well, plodding.

Very good, Mr. Howard. They were the ones who didn't try to second-guess their commanding officer. Can I suggest that in future you take a leaf from their book and refrain from poking your nose into things you have been told do not concern you? Or at least learn not to be so predictable about it." "Ah—" "Go away before I mock you," he says, sounding distantly amused. I

Shut up. Stand up. Put this on. That's right . . . if you were the kind of man who found it easy to do that kind of thing do you think I'd bother with you?" Her question takes him by surprise, rattling his introspective daze.

I picked you for this task, Colonel, precisely because you won't do it lightly.

Desks are to executives what souped-up Mitsubishi Colts with low-profile alloys, metal-flake paint jobs, and extra-loud, chrome-plated exhaust pipes are to chavs; they're a big swinging dick, the proxy they use to proclaim their sense of self-importance. If you want to understand an executive, you study his desk.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. —Lord Acton

War made the state, and the state made war

the most dangerous kind of job stress stems from having "low control" over one's responsibilities.

Several studies of thousands of British civil servants (the Whitehall studies) have found that workers who have little control over their jobs—meaning they have minimal say over what tasks are performed or how those tasks are carried out—have a significantly higher mortality rate than other workers in the civil service with more decision-making authority.

Here is a statement of the obvious: banks with "state" in the name are chartered by the state; those with "national" in their name are chartered by the feds.)

Not that he'd have doubted Helen's word in any case; she was a librarian, and librarians were never wrong.

You're not the boss of me," she told him breathlessly. His chuckle sounded strangled. "Pretend I am for a while.

reason. She had a well-endowed bosom. Marshal

Stupid people go to college butsmart people own them....

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.

Looking at a king's mouth, ' said an old man, 'one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything. They can bring out crowds of demonstrators whenever they need them.

stories. One of them went regularly to a market in the neighboring village and helped himself to whatever he liked. He went in full uniform, breaking the earth with his boots, and no one dared touch him. It was said that if you touched a soldier, Government

No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.

I wouldn't put myself under the democratic dictatorship even of angels and archangels.

Looking at a king's mouth, one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.