Quotes About Authority

It is important to acknowledge, however, that, in practice, people's judgments about the authority of the executive are greatly and even decisively affected by their approval or disapproval of the incumbent president. Under a Republican president, Democrats do not approve of the idea of a discretion-wielding chief executive, enabled by deferential courts. Under a Democratic president, Republicans tend to have, and even to voice, the same cautions and concerns.

The source and root of all monetary evil [is] the government monopoly on the issue and control of money. —Friedrich Hayek

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be

A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity.

Unquestioning obedience is hailed as a great virtue only by those leaders whose commands are highly questionable.

Even at their absolute best, religious answers remain authoritarian attempts to instill virtue through inspiring intimidation.

If you drive a car, I will the tax the street,If you try to sit, I will tax your seat,If you get too cold, I will tax the heat,If you take a walk, I will tax your feet.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street; if you try to sit, I'll tax your seat; if you get too cold, I'll tax the heat; if you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.

One father is enough to govern one hundred sons, but not a hundred sons one father

One father is more than a hundred Schoolemasters.

He who has the pepper may season as he lists.

The ultimate expression of law is not order - it's prison.

Politics is the pursuit of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.

The apologists recognize that these places are controlled by absolute terror, but they justify the pig's excesses with the argument that we exist outside the practice of any civilized codes of conduct. Since we are convicts rather than men, a bullet through the heat, summary execution for fistfighting or stepping across a line is not extreme or unsound at all. An official is allowed full range in violent means because a convict can be handled no other way.

The newspaper was always behind the news, not in front. You shouldn't ever go to the papers for information. They usually printed what they thought people wanted to see, and they had no explanation to give. It wasn't the king they saw. That wasn't the king at all. It was the king's shadow.

These colonial governors, who were not always very educated or even very educable, could convince themselves that what was merely a temporary privilege should become a permanent right. (p.97)

It was a big thing to be a king. It meant that you were getting the feeling that you lived in a big room all by yourself where no one could see you and you were your own man. Free and alone.

Language was a kind of passport. You could go where you like if you had a clean record. You could say what you like if you know how to say it. It didn't matter whether you felt everything you said. You had language, good, big words to make up for what you didn't feel. And if you were really educated, and you could command the language like a captain on a ship,

Impressive, most impressive.

Now, look you here, Sekundar," says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off. "Sir Alexander. if you please," says he icily, as though I'd never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint.

journalists fea their loss of authority in the digital age will undermine their ability to hold government to account. Yet the government has much more to worry about because the internet has empowered vested interests, and Oppositions, in a way that effectively cancel an election result within weeks of the final ballot being counted. p236

At Howard's election campaign launch on 28 October, he delivered his most memorable phrase in politics: 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.

In the last century, when a wicked and unworthy subject annoyed the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of Russia, he had his head cut of without much ceremony; but when the same happened in England, the monarch declared: 'We are not amused'; and the whole British nation even now, a century later, is immensely proud of how rude their Queen was.