Quotes About Authority

Meina Gladstone sat at the head of the long table and felt the peculiar and not-unpleasant sense of separateness which comes from far too little sleep over far too long a period.

Belay that!" cries the first mate. "No fucking profanity. Speak when you're fucking spoken to, Crispe.

And then you'll do what I say? "Yes." "Take us where I'll tell you to?" "Yes." "No hidden overrides?" "None that I know of.

the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.

All humans feed on violence, on the small exercises of power over another, but few have tasted—as we have—the ultimate power.

Ogni forma di violenza è potere, signor Luczak.

He wasn't interested in asking questions, only in finding answers. What's the difference? asked Baedecker. He felt the conversation slipping out of his control, dropping away from him like an aircraft that had reached stall speed. The difference is that Scott took the line of least resistance, said Maggie. Like most people, he found it too uncomfortable to be out in the open, unsheltered by some shadow of authority. So when the questions got too hard, he settled for easy answers.

What in fuck do you fucking well think you're fucking doing?' The officer's broad helmet bobbed as he shouted. I thanked all of the gods that he was not a Sikh.

The roof was torn off the gym. God's way of telling the jocks that they'd better remember who's really charge.

When kings the sword of justice first lay down, They are no kings, though they possess the crown. Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things, The good of subjects is the end of kings.

That all plays, bear baitings, 88 games, singing of ballads, buckler play, 89 or such like causes of assemblies of people, be utterly prohibited, and the parties offending severely punished by every alderman in his ward.

And one of the paradoxes is that leaders, the higher they go, the less vertical feedback they get on how they're actually doing, because people are afraid to tell them. So leaders can go off in a direction thinking they're doing fine, not realizing they're not

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.

I'm sitting on the lumbering late bus, thinking about the way I'm going to start my Monday: by filling out an unexcused absence form for the cranky secretary. The last time the bus was late she actually told me, Don't tell me the bus was late. That excuse won't work anymore today. About ten kids ahead of you said that their bus was late, too. I tried to explain that we all took the same bus, but there was no pulling the wool over her eyes. She wasn't born yesterday.

The bus driver gave me a why-the-hell-aren't-you-at-school look and I gave him a shut-up-you're-a-bus-driver-so-bus-drive look right back.

I don't have to answer to you," Adam said, instantly and harshly. He brushed his pants off like he'd just buried his mother.

Who can I complain to, if I don't like the shape of the globe?

History is written by the winners

I've got to realize that when they continually admonish me to speak and write simply so that people who read these reports will be able to understand me, they are talking about themselves as well. But still it's frightening to realize that my fate is in the hands of men who are not the giants I once thought them to be, men who don't know all the answers.

Authority could derive from passion, not pieces of paper.

Donald Trump can do a lot of things I can't, but he can no more get out of the prison than I can

If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.

This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood.