Quotes About Authority

The New Testament, that is, was made by the Church; the Church was not made by the New Testament. That is why, speaking generally, Catholics differ from Protestants in the importance given to the authority of the Bible on the one hand, and to the authority of the Church on the other. Therefore, Catholics more than Protestants would tend to say that the community has authority over its normative literature.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. —Joyce Carol Oates

Clericalism is the pyramid, a structure of domination that must be protected at all costs by everyone occupying a niche in it — which is why bishops and most priests so routinely shield the clerical abusers instead of their victims.

Francis has a tragic blind spot — the corruption of clericalism….

For the last time: 'The law may upset reason but reason may never upset the law, or our whole society will shred like an old tatami.

only the emperor among three hundred millions is allowed to use vermilion ink. Imagine that. If Queen Victoria said, 'From now on, only I am allowed to use vermilion,' as much as we love her, forty thousand Britons would instantly forswear all ink but vermilion. I would mysel'.

You live by the lash and you'll die by it.

Fallibility in a leader is very trying. Isn't it? They spill so much of other people's blood.

The word of God surpasses earthly orders.

People are "the company" and those in charge can and always will hide behind that facade, that "the company must survive," or "for the good of the company," and so on, wrecking or promoting for personal reasons, enmities or hatreds.

By historic custom only the descendants of the sprawling, ancient, semi-divine families of the Minowara, Takashima, and Fujimoto were entitled to the rank of Shogun.

There can only be one Tai-Pan.

Without terror how can the few rule the many?

Put not your trust in bloody princes, they can plead expedience.

semidivine families of the Minowara, Takashima, and Fujimoto were entitled to the rank of Sh?gun.

the Sh?gun was all powerful. Until he was overthrown.

To give advice to a tyrant was to suggest his fallibility and offer oneself as a scapegoat should things go wrong.

The pressures of command were clearly weighing on him. He had insufficient authority, but he was no longer sure he wanted more of it.

When a man is in command, he sits in a position where he cannot have friend or foe. Regular human relationships do not figure into it. So you can't worry about what people think of you, and you can't lie awake and have sleepless nights. The job of being in command is lonely by definition.

Those we understand are those we control.

Lose thirty pounds within the next thirty days, or I'll have Chief Horrall put you on the 'Fat Husband's Diet' recently extolled in the Ladies' Home Journal.

The incumbent Sheriff, "Kickback" Kit Denkins, was a notorious no-goodnik. He took bribes from crooked building contractors and solicited high school girls for their soiled underwear.

Hoffa said, "Fucking Jesus turned fish into bread, and that's about the only thing I haven't tried. I've spent six hundred grand on the primaries and bought every fucking cop and alderman and councilman and mayor and fucking grand juror and senator and judge and DA and fucking prosecutorial investigator who'd let me. I'm like Jesus trying to part the Red Fucking Sea and not getting no further than some motel on the beach.

The future chief justice of the United States told the delegates that an independent federal judiciary was a necessary bulwark against an overreaching Congress. If Congress were to exceed its powers, said Marshall, it would be the duty of the judiciary to declare the action void. Marshall