Quotes About Authority

Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.

I had a lot of notes and fragments and observations that never amounted to anything. After the Wall had gone down, so many people were writing about Berlin, I didn't have the same urgency or feel enough authority.

It is urgent to shift from a traditional, authoritative, rote educational approach to a project-based and experiential approach. Specific hard skills are fundamental, but is even more important that students 'learn how to learn' and focus on crucial soft skills such as flexibility and the ability to adapt to change.

Every man who has sat in the Oval Office has felt the short, sharp shock when an ordinary day in the highest office in the land shifts from pomp and ceremony to urgent briefings, immediate choices, crucial decisions where lives are on the line. It's not something that may happen to a president. It's something that will happen.

I've got a pen and I've got a phone - and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use earplugs?

It may be necessary to use methods other than constitutional ones.

The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it's all checks and no balances.

I got my way with my grandma. I used to get whoopings with my mom, but my grandma spoiled me.

I wasn't made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: 'Laws are for idiots.' She was right.

I used to be a Catholic. I left because I object to conversion by concussion. If you don't agree with what they teach, you get clobbered over the head until you do. All that does is change the shape of the head.

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events. But now there are no big stories, and politicians react randomly to every new crisis - leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

Vox populi vox dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God. The slogan was useful for those who first attempted to substitute the people for God as the source of political authority. Their attempt was ultimately so successful that God no longer seems to be needed in government.

In China, the problem is that with the system of censorship that's now in place, the user doesn't know to what extent, why, and under what authority there's been censorship. There's no way of appealing. There's no due process.

The user, not the ISP, should be the kingmaker of apps.

If you have your own currency, you have your own governance, so each currency becomes their own mini-government. Mini-government is a big word, but it's a body that is governed in a decentralized manner where users have a say, where there's oversight and transparency.

Bureaucrats sometimes do not have the correct information, while citizens and users of resources do.

The users are not going to be in the position of accepting what's been collected; they're going to be in the position of being able to demand collection.

The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.