Quotes About Authority

If thou art a master, be sometimes blind if a servant, sometimes deaf.

The more laws the more offenders.

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

The improver of natural science absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law

The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them.

In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.

Humans are driven by a perpetual and restless desire of power.

No mans error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

Anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.

You see, at Rugby I was rather a great man. There one had a share in the ruling of 300 boys, and a good deal of responsibility; but here one has only just to take care of oneself, and keep out of scrapes; and that's what I never could do.

Ecclesiasticism in science is only unfaithfulness to truth.

If derision failed, there was always the police, who were authorized to arrest a non-noble person for wearing a sword.

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated

Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact casus non faederis to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them

The only greater evil than separation... is living under a government of discretion

Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force

The execution of the laws is more important than the making them

The people are the only censors of their governors, and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences