Quotes About Authority

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any further together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic whatever; and here I must desire all those critics to mind their own business, and not to intermeddle with affairs or works which no ways concern them; for till they produce the authority by which they are constituted judges, I shall not plead to their jurisdiction.

Asking 'Who ought to be the boss' is like asking 'Who ought to be the tennor in the quartet' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

The pagan may lose confidence in one particular kind of authority. When his faith begins to waver, he is more likely to change the name of the imaginary authority – or to assume that it controls everyone except himself – than to accept the nonpagan view that human beings are self-controlling.

What we call 'morals' is simply blind obedience to words of command.

What is put into the hands of B cannot be put into the hands of A.

More enduringly significant than the European influence of the Dictionary was its influence across the Atlantic. The American adoption of the Dictionary was a momentous event not just in its history, but in the history of lexicography. For Americans in the second half of the eighteenth century, Johnson was the seminal authority on language, and the subsequent development of American lexicography was coloured by his fame. America's

For another 300 years lawyers would continue to do a great deal of their writing and thinking in French, and they would supplement it with generous helpings of Latin – words like affidavit and subpoena – which conveyed an air of precision and authority unavailable to English. To this day the language of the law proves prolix, repetitious, archaic and theatrical, as indeed do many of its quite mystifying processes and practitioners.

Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny.

High office teaches decision-making, not substance…. A period in high office consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it.

We are all the President's men.

power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tepmts empty posturing.

For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government.

And history teaches this iron law of revolutions: the more extensive the eradication of existing authority, the more its successors must rely on naked power to establish themselves. For,in the end,legitimacy involves an acceptance of authority without compulsion; its absence turns every contest into a test of strength.

order without freedom, even if sustained by momentary exaltation, eventually creates its own counterpoise; yet freedom cannot be secured or sustained without a framework of order to keep the peace.

Who controls money control the world.

Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy.

Who controls the money controls the world

In the vacuum of authority following the demonstrations' initial success, factions from the pre-uprising period are often in a position to shape the outcome.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

Era um sistema velho de milénios – vigorava já quando o Império Romano governou toda a Europa como unidade – e baseado não na igualdade soberana dos Estados, mas na presumível ausência de limite à soberania do imperador.

The ability to enable people to gather in a square differs from building new institutions of state.

Em período de convulsões generalizadas, um país onde seja preservada a autoridade doméstica fica em boa posição para explorar o caos dos Estados vizinhos em benefício de objetivos internacionais mais elevados.