Quotes About Authority

The Supreme Court, once in existence, cannot be abolished, because its foundation is not in an act of the legislative department of the Government, but in the Constitution of the United States.

But here's the bottom line, the president of the United States, he controls the bully pulpit, he can talk about anything he wants to talk about.

It's also natural in that part of the world to blame what people view as the... as the most important authority in the region, and that currently is the United States of America.

I said to myself, where are we living? In the United States of America where you're innocent until proven guilty, or Nazi Germany with the Gestapo calling?

I am often asked if, when I was secretary, I had problems with foreign men. That is not who I had problems with, because I arrived in a very large plane that said United States of America. I had more problems with the men in our own government.

Whenever anybody says what you do isn't good, it's always unflattering and makes me feel uncomfortable. But when the person who's in charge of the United States of America says, 'Not good,' I'm like, 'Oh.' It's a little unflattering.

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.

Government is a collective unity. There is no decision by cabinet which can be attributed to one individual.

There is one universal sex law: Sex shall not be unregulated.

Rome should sometimes intervene and say this or that is not in conformity with the Catholic faith. Theologians should understand that. Some theologians go too far, for example, reducing the Catholic faith to a universal philosophy.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

And I would argue the second greatest force in the universe is ownership.

Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.

One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can't, then it's bad. But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do.

Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

I think the most important leadership lessons I've learned have to do with understanding the context in which you are leading. Universities are places with enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution.

In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

The job of mayor and Governor is becoming more and more like the job of university president, which I used to be; it looks like you are in charge, but you are not.

I've always been comfortable with people who run things, whether it was the principal of my high school or the president of the university.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.

The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.

It seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all.

My dad was quite a forbidding figure. I realise now that that was mainly because he worked so hard. He wasn't unkind, but he was a presence.