Quotes About Authority

Wisdom degenerates in governments as governments increase in age.

The poorest of men are the most useful to those seeking power.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Nothing mortal is so unstable and subject to change as power which has no foundation.

Creativity is an area in which younger people have a tremendous advantage, since they have an endearing habit of always questioning past wisdom and authority.

We do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.

What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

Power naturally and necessarily follows property.

Worry is a subtle way of telling God that He's fallen asleep at the wheel and that things aren't under His authority, but ours.

Let him leave the imperial court, who wishes to be virtuous. Virtue and absolute power cannot coexist.

No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures.

The wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world... History is the true demonstration of Religion.

When a king begins to act like a king, it is not long before someone else is king! Serving is a way we can place value on one another. A wise man is a server.

Power in any Form . . . when directed only by human Wisdom and Benevolence is dangerous.

Ideas that are at odds with the inherited collective wisdom of antiquity are always, on their face suspect.

With whose imperfections will you bear, and what insult are you capable of enduring, if a thoughtless word from your own Superior is unbearable?

Whosoever, therefore, asks any one to believe blindly, or drags people behind him by the controlling power of his superior will, does an injury to humanity, though he may not intend it.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

And most of the failures in parent-child relationships, from my observation, begin when the child begins to acquire a mind and a will of its own, to make independent decisions and to question the omnipotence or the wisdom of the parent.

When a man's position in life depends upon his having a certain opinion, that's the opinion he will have.

I have, alas, only one illusion left, and that is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

It is executive presence—and no man or woman attains a top job, lands an extraordinary deal, or develops a significant following without this heady combination of confidence, poise, and authenticity that convinces the rest of us we're in the presence of someone who's the real deal. It's an amalgam of qualities that telegraphs that you are in charge or deserve to be.

how you act (gravitas), how you speak (communication), and how you look (appearance) count for a lot in determining your leadership presence.

Man has responsibility, not power—Tuscarora