Quotes About Authority

the job of the press is to disprove the falsehoods that power invariably disseminates to protect itself.

Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.

Ante el descontento social, las autoridad suelen tener dos opciones: apaciguar a la población con concesiones simbólicas o reforzar el control para reducir al mínimo el daño que eso pueda causar a sus intereses. Al parecer, las élites occidentales consideran que la segunda opción —fortalecer su poder— es el mejor procedimiento, acaso el único viable, para proteger su posición.

the powerful and the powerless.

British philosopher Jeremy Bentham's eighteenth-century conception of the Panopticon, a building design he believed would allow institutions to effectively control human behavior.

A prime justification for surveillance—that it's for the benefit of the population—relies on projecting a view of the world that divides citizens into categories of good people and bad people. In that view, the authorities use their surveillance powers only against bad people, those who are "doing something wrong," and only they have anything to fear from the invasion of their privacy.

what goals drive all institutions of authority. "Doing something wrong," in the eyes of such institutions, encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behavior, and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.

The lesson for me was clear: national security officials do not like the light. They act abusively and thuggishly only when they believe they are safe, in the dark. Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, we discovered, its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote. *

Doing something wrong," in the eyes of such institutions, encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behavior, and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat. The

assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who "have done something wrong" should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing. *

society pays great attention to the motives of dissenters, but none to those who submit to our institutions, either by ensuring that their actions remain concealed or by using any other means. Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state. In

The ability to eavesdrop on people's communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused.

In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." After

This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being "left alone," is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.

Radical expansions of power are often introduced in this way, by persuading people that they affect just a specific, discrete group.

once the citizenry acquiesces to a new power, believing that it does not affect them, it becomes institutionalized and legitimized and objection becomes impossible.

A population, a country that venerates physical safety above all other values will ultimately give up its liberty and sanction any power seized by authority in exchange for the promise, no matter how illusory, of total security. However, absolute safety is itself chimeric, pursued by never obtained. The pursuit degrades those who engage in it as well as any nation that comes to be defined by it.

no man is above the law and that includes the president of the United States

My mom was definitely very strict with me.

The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin.

I began to see that for some, religion was just a form of politics you couldn't criticize.

I'm also now immune to politicians who say, "I've traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know..." I've traveled more than any of them, and I don't know.

It also reminds me of an organizing principle: Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts.

I'm also now immune to politicians who say, "I've traveled the length and breadth of this great land, and I know…" I've traveled more than any of them, and I don't know.