Quotes About Authority

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers

I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

A republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it.

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

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 to rest on inference.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. That government is best which governs least.

No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and governments to gain ground.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.

So I remember both medicine, because I frequently sick, particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then, and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy.

Sometimes tyrants do away with the necessity of satire by imposing absurdity themselves.

High Europe always played at ethnic contempt because it was High Europe, and so had the strength, the authority, to make the racial rules. We great unwashed of the outer world, on the coasts of new continents, though we might ourselves have behaved atrociously to indigenes, were baffled by the determination with which Europe returned to the frenzies of racial myth. Nice boys and not-so-nice boys took up the theme, put on the uniform, did the dirty work.

A hundred years? In political terms, that's when dinosaurs ruled the planet.

The divine right of kings may now be acknowledged as a fabrication, a falsified permit for prideful dementia and impulsive mayhem. The inalienable rights of certain people, on the other hand, seemingly remain current: somehow we believe they are not fabrications because hallowed documents declare they are real.

Work with what you have control of and you'll have your hands full.