Quotes About Authority

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

I don't think, sir, that you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.

Caring for children is a dance between setting appropriate limits as caretakers and avoiding unnecessary power struggles that result in unhappiness.

The law has no power over heroes.

Quand on veut dessecher un marais, on ne fait pas voter les grenouilles. — Mme. EMILE. DE GIRADIN

Authority is just and faithful in all matters of promise-keeping; it is also considerate, and that is why a good mother is the best home-ruler.

It is far easier to govern from a height, as it were, than from the intimacy of close personal contact. But you cannot be quite frank and easy with beings who are obviously of a higher and of another order than yourself; at least, you cannot when you are a little boy...But it is much to a child to know that he may question, may talk of the thing that perplexes him, and that there is comprehension for his perplexities.

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . . So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . .

They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs. MacAvelly suggested. "Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em—nor God—nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next?" (from According to Solomon)

Suggesting an additional definition for 'politics':] The art of organizing and handling men in large numbers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, appropriating public wealth.

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained. In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game.

Democracy calls for the understanding, recognition, and universal practise of social laws,—laws which are "natural," like those of physics and chemistry; but your religion—and your education, too— taught Authority—not real law.

Our laws as we support them now are slow, wasteful, cumbrous systems, which require a special caste to interpret and another to enforce; wherein the average citizen knows nothing of the law, and cares only to evade it when he can, obey it when he must.

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

This is a revolution not a coup . It is either unconditional surrender or we will take down the garrison

That was emasculating." "Says the guy wearing the collar.

You're supposed to be cooperating." "I am cooperating." "Wear the hat." "I'm not wearing the hat.

She lied to me today," Archie said. "A teenager?" Susan said with faux surprise. "Lying to an authority figure? Impossible.

I only answer to two people, myself and God.

Even down here, money has plenty to say.

Sure he's dead, and it's a good thing for us. It's hard to argue with a dead man. A dead man can't change his mind or make new rules, or behave like a bastard so no one will listen to him anymore. A dead man stays a saint.

Boys disobey their parents with such great regularity that it's barely worth a comment; and if yours is talented enough to rebel in such grand fashion, then you ought to consider it a point of pride that he's such a sharp lad.

The captain strikes me as a competent officer, and competent officers are never given enough information to work with.