Quotes About Authority

No miremos al hombre sino sólo a la autoridad de que está revestido. No obedecemos al hombre sino a la autoridad de Dios en ese hombre.

Any action which lacks in obedience is a fall, and any act of disobedience is rebellion.

Para que se manifieste la autoridad, debe haber sumisión. Si ha de haber sumisión, es necesario excluir el yo; pero según nuestro yo, la sumisión no es posible. La sumisión sólo es posible cuando uno vive en el Espíritu. Esta vida en el Espíritu es la suprema expresión de la voluntad de Dios.

A lei não decide se a coisa é errada, apenas se é legal.

Who decides the rightness? That is the question that can never be answered satisfactorily. The law doesn't decide if it's wrong, only if it's legal.

I could think back to my encounters with rules and regulations that didn't seem to make much sense to me, and have empathy for my children's frustrations. I understood as a very young boy that to blindly follow rules just because they're rules is to lose control over your whole life.

Mastering others requires force; mastering the self needs strength.

The functions of these elders, therefore, determine the power of the people for a representative is one chosen by others to do in their name what they are entitled to do in their own persons or rather to exercise the powers which radically inhere in those for whom they act.

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice for all right of private judgment is then denied.

All her triumphs over sin and error have been effected by the word of God. So long as she uses this and relies on it alone, she goes on conquering; but when any thing else, be it reason, science, tradition, or the commandments of men, is allowed to take its place or to share its office, then the church, or the Christian, is at the mercy of the adversary. Hoc signo vinces—the apostle may be understood to say to every believer and to the whole church.

Romanists again admit that many false traditions have prevailed in different ages and in different parts of the Church. Those who receive them are confident of their genuineness, and zealous in their support. How shall the line be drawn between the true and false? By what criterion can the one be distinguished from the other? Protestants say there is no such criterion, and therefore, if the authority of tradition be admitted, the Church is exposed to a flood of superstition and error.

Romanists argue that such is the obscurity of the Scriptures, that not only the people, but the Church itself needs the aid of tradition in order to their being properly understood. But if the Bible, a comparatively plain book, in one probable volume, needs to be thus explained, what is to explain the hundreds of folios in which these traditions are recorded? Surely a guide to the interpretation of the latter must be far more needed than for the Scriptures.

In American life, democracy and capitalism, despite their advantages, tend to erode the place of traditional authorities (families, religious faith, and other institutions), while putting new authorities (public opinion and market forces) in their stead. And that has consequences.

Religion is to democracy as a bridle is to a horse. Religion moderates democracy because it appeals to an authority higher than democracy itself.5 But

The late distinguished sociologist Robert Nisbet, following Tocqueville, argued that when the forces of personal liberation are dominant in a culture, the result is not maximal liberty, but the absorption of liberty by government.

All political power is a trust.

It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one blockhead to do so much mischief.

Action, not principle is the object of law and legislation; with a person's principles no government has any right to interfere.

If you silence remonstrance and stifle complaint, you then leave no other alternative but force and violence.

canon gives orders that no more prayers are to be offered up for the British government.

Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon--my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it. Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few — the only — who got it right.

Our shame seems to come from what we do with the negative messages, negative affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up. We hear these from our parents, parent figures and other people in authority, such as teachers and clergy. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow not all right, not okay. That our feelings, our needs, our True Self, our Child Within is not acceptable.

With the help of parents, other authority figures, and institutions (such as education, organized religion, politics, the media, and even some psychotherapy), most of us learn to stifle or deny our Child Within. When this vital part of each of us is not nurtured and allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. I further describe these two parts of each of us in Table 1. (See page 10).