Quotes About Authority

Old age was not then the abandoned desolation that so often darkens it in an individualistic age. The young never questioned their duty to care for the old; the old remained to the end the first consideration and the last authority; and after their death their graves were honored as long as a male descendant survived. Funerals

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. (Chapter on Aristotle p.89/543)

At the other end of the scale history reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

Men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things.

It was a modest invention, but its uses were so varied that man always looked upon it as a symbol of power and authority, from the wand of the fairies and the staff of the shepherd to the rod of Moses or Aaron, the ivory cane of the Roman consul, the lituus of the augurs, and the mace of the magistrate or the king.

Government and History

When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.

citizens could forget, while they went through all the forms of the dead Republic, that they were living under a military monarchy in which force was hidden so long as phrases could rule.

justice is the interest of the stronger

Political society has made the many the property of the few.

Age has a way of giving humans a gravitas that they haven't earned. Like most people, I have essentially the same personality I had at twenty-two. But because a decade has passed since then, I'm given more authority now. I'm thought of as wiser. I'm not. The same shit will happen in another decade. I'll still be the same guy. But "wiser." And as much of an idiot as ever. I like it. I could get used to this adult business.

If I lived in North Korea, I'd want my own army, too.

Powers is the greatest aphrodisiac. -Nicole Muldoon

Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.

Listen to the fool's reproach! It is a kingly title!

One rule for the lion and ox is oppression.

What God is he writes laws of peace & clothes him in a tempest?

First of all, the Captain rates the honorific 'sir.' You will render that honorific or I will plant my foot in your ass.

But Raynor wondered, should evil go unpunished just because it's wielded by someone in power? Was

On the road, as in many other aspects of Indian life, Might is Right.

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

I Would Rather Be Governed By the First 2,000 People in the Telephone Directory than by the Harvard University Faculty.

It always takes a man that never made much at any thing to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to his name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.

I reckon I'll be at the beck and call of folks with money all my life, but thank God I won't ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who's got two cents to buy a stamp.