Quotes About Authority

If no one remembers becomes the equivalent of If there is no God. If there is no God, Dostoyevsky said, then everything is permitted.

My dad's not a very intimidating father figure.

People would say you look weak if you're not cursing the opposition and driving around in a big black car while always wearing a tie. Above all, to be 'strong' you're always supposed to be giving orders.

Taxation with representation ain't so hot either.

Power makes slaves of us all." & "A habit unchecked, becomes a necessity." - Ed and Luran Warren

If your whole team consists of novice programmers, your expertise will give you considerable power; but if the other team members are also experts, they will attach less importance to your technical expertise. In that case, they'll pay more attention to organizational power, like the power to acquire extra hardware, to extend the schedule, or to capture a more interesting assignment.

Effective leaders often have to act even when they don't understand all possible factors

They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority.

They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.

Never turn your back on government.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.

Arise, 0 Yahweh; Judge the earth! May you take possession of all the nations!

So, my good father, you go and write the order to burn that book, as your church requires of you. And I will say nothing to the printing house, as my conscience requires of me. Censura praevia or censura repressiva, the effect is the same. Either way, a book is destroyed. Better you do it than have us so intellectually enslaved that we do it for you.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power and is often, in point of fact, useless. Just as a leader doesn't need intelligence, a man in my job doesn't need too much of it either.

Journalism has already come to be the first power in the land.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.

Judges are apt to be naive, simple-minded men.

Give your decision, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong.

The Court's authority - possessed of neither the purse nor the sword -ultimately rests on substantial public confidence in its moral sanctions.

I am the King of Rome, and above grammar.

Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape.

Trudeau: Yes, well, there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed, but it is more important to keep law and order in a society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who we don't like the looks of. Reporter: At any cost? How far would you go with that? How far would you extend that? Trudeau: Well, just watch me. . . ."