Quotes About Authority

The rod of iron with which he rules her never appears in company--it is a private rod, and is always kept upstairs.

To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

Homer is right: "Bad is the lordship of many; let one be your ruler and master." For such a man law would be rather an instrument than a limit: "for men of eminent ability there is no law—they are themselves a law.

Bacon distrusts the people, who were in his day quite without access to education; "the lowest of all flatteries is the flattery of the common people";41 and "Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss?

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

Today there is a place called Egypt, but the Egyptian people are not masters there; long since they have been broken by conquest, and merged in language and marriage with their Arab conquerors; their cities know only the authority of Moslems and Englishmen, and the feet of weary pilgrims who travel thousands of miles to find that the Pyramids are merely heaps of stones.

They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.

Nobody loves a policeman until he needs one.

From whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem we monotonously reach the same conclusion: that the community should determine the ends to be pursued, but that only experts should select and apply the means; that choice should be democratically spread, but that office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped and winnowed best.

When those who must do the fighting have the right to decide between war and peace, history will no longer be written in blood.

The father gets accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son to be on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents…. The teacher fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors…. The old do not like to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they imitate the young….

When the Duke of Wei offered him the prime ministry he dismissed the royal messengers with a curtness indicative of a writer's dreams: "Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence. I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign.

heresy or blasphemy must be punished with death, even if the heretic should be one's closest kin.

Consequently—since there is a natural selection of institutions and ideas as well as of organisms and groups—the passage from hunting to agriculture brought a change from tribal property to family property; the most economical unit of production became the unit of ownership. As the family took on more and more a patriarchal form, with authority centralized in the oldest male, property became increasingly individualized, and personal bequest arose.

a handful of might is better than a bagful of right.

Al reclamar un origen divino y una hegemonía espiritual, la Iglesia se ofreció como tribunal internacional ante el cual todos los gobernantes debían ser moralmente responsables.

Laws against free speech are subversive of all law; for men will not long respect laws which they may not criticize.

The more a government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted; not indeed by the avaricious, . . . but by those whom good education, sound morality, and virtue have rendered more free.

But if the government itself is a chaos and an absurdity, if it rules without helping, and commands without leading,—how can we persuade the individual, in such a state, to obey the laws and confine his self-seeking within the circle of the total good?

Voltaire might say, "I have no scepter, but I have a pen.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

From whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem we monotonously reach the same conclusion: that the community should determine the ends to be pursued, but that only experts should select and apply the means; that choice should be democratically spread, but that office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped and winnowed best. (p.89/543)

They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.134

The Bourbons might have preserved themselves," said Napoleon, "if they had controlled writing materials. The advent of cannon killed the feudal system; ink will kill the modern social organization.