Quotes About Authority

In principle everyone, however powerful, is an object.

Toda "cultura pura" tem causado mal-estar aos porta-vozes do poder

The way to a tyrant's heart is through a doctorate

When you are harried, browbeaten, cajoled, bullied, pursued, threatened, bribed and surveyed by the state and its agencies, you have little inclination left over for obedience: least of all obedience to what one judge called the unenforceable. You have already paid your dues to society. Society can now look after itself. In the small sphere left to you, you will do exactly what you please, without regard to anyone else.

In a democratic age, only the behaviour of the authorities is subject to public criticism; that of the people themselves, never. This is a modern version of Rousseau's doctrine: if it weren't for the authorities, the people would be good.

Middle-class friends of mine were appalled to discover that the spelling being taught to their daughter in school was frequently wrong; they were even more appalled when they drew it to the attention of the school's head teacher and were told it did not matter, since the spelling was approximately right and everyone knew anyway what the misspelling meant.

man who thinks he is guarding himself against prejudices [by which he means inherited moral standards and taboos] by resisting the authority of others, leaves open every avenue to singularity, vanity, self-conceit, obstinacy, and many other vices, all tending to warp the judgment.

few are so conformist as rebellious youth.

that since both the British policeman and the Nazi storm trooper wore a uniform, the British policeman was a brute. It is one of the chief characteristics of modern rhetoric, designed not so much to find the truth as (in the words of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam) to 'maintain your rage.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

No man is above the law and no man below it.

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss ... The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.

More and more it is evident that the State, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures.

The President and the Congress are all very well in their way. They can say what they think they think, but it rests with the Supreme Court to decide what they have really thought.

While President, I have been President, emphatically; I have used every ounce of power there was in the office.…I do not believe that any President ever had as thoroughly good a time as I have had, or has ever enjoyed himself as much.

The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the wrong kind of man.

The scribe was a strict teacher and he did not accept anything less than perfect... Like a mother sensing the baby quickening within her, suddenly, to me, the letters were no longer hostile and unwieldly. I had command of them, with my head and with my hand... The words struck, as clear and as pure as a bell peal on a winter morning.

the Constitution was designed not to give us rights but to prevent government from taking our rights.