Quotes About Authority

The buck stops here.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead for 15 years.

If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military.

How far would Moses have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt?

I fired MacArthur because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.

Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.

There is a lure in power. It can get into a man's blood just as gambling and lust for money have been known to do.

The President may have a great many powers given to him by the Constitution and may have certain powers under certain laws which are given to him by the Congress of the United States; but the principal power that the President had is to bring people in and try to persuade them to do what they ought to do without persuasion.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don't want to do, or do what they're too lazy to do, and like it.

Poor Ike. He'll say do this and do that and nothing at all will happen.

Poor men have more to fear when the laws go down than the rich, for they are less able to protect themselves without law. You had all better shiver when you see a policeman rioting rather than putting down a riot, for he may well come after you next, or stand aside when someone else does.

An empty belly makes a stern taskmaster.~Victor Radcliff

Some things unfortunately yielded to no man's orders. Maybe that was why foolish people imagined gods into being: to have someone whose orders were sure to be obeyed.

The hardest challenge being an HR is that sometimes you have to be the LAWYER, the JUDGE, and the HANGMAN.

I respect every way in which you are a troublemaker, now get up and do what your mother says.

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.

Premoderns placed their trust in authority. Moderns lost their confidence in authority and placed it in human reason instead. Postmoderns kept the modern distrust of authority but lost their trust in reason and have found nothing to replace it. This is the crux of all postmodern thought.

The general idea of universal moral norms is ancient, widespread, and endorsed by practically every moral authority up until late in the modern period.

Because teachers, no matter how kind, no matter how friendly, are sadistic and evil to the core.

I'm a creature of the night for God's sake And she wants me home by eleven?

I am a damn good high priestess of the intellect,