Quotes About Authority

The slave-breeders and slave-traders are a small, odious, and detested class among you; and yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as you are the master of your own negroes.

A general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do precisely as they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern them.

Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.

I'm telling you, the lunatics are really running the asylum when it comes to the criminal courts

We succumb to this time-sucking rule when we're writing for a new editor or publication, and we want to impress them with our reporting skills. We'll search a database for one more study, one more factoid that will make our article sound more authoritative. Or maybe one or two more expert quotes will provide more balance. We fall into this trap when we're tackling a subject we've never covered before or a lengthy assignment where we have more leeway on content.

Control is just an illusion.

The political scientist Robert A. Dahl observed more than a half century ago that the Supreme Court "is an essential part of the political leadership," part of the "dominant political alliance.

Between 1799 and 1810 the legislatures of New Jersey, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania passed statutes forbidding the state courts from citing any cases decided by English courts after July 4, 1776.

The Ledbetter episode came and went quickly. It is entirely predictable that other discrete disputes over the intent of Congress and the meaning of federal statutes will similarly come and go in the future. But there exists a more profound constitutionally-based struggle between the Court and Congress over the boundaries of congressional lawmaking authority, with origins deep in the country's history.

zone of twilight" in which "the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority." He then "can only rely upon his own independent powers," and whether that reliance is legitimate "is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

perhaps the expression of public support for the Court reflects what political scientists call the "legitimation hypothesis," the theory that once the Supreme Court rules on an issue, a measurable proportion of the public will come to the conclusion that "if they believe it, it must be right.

The decision's significance, of course, lay in the Court's assertion of authority to review the constitutionality of acts of Congress. "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is," Marshall declared—a line that the Court has invoked throughout its history, down to the present. In the guise of modestly disclaiming authority to act, the Court had assumed for itself great power.

the Court occupies a place in the public imagination.

You're the one with the badge," I admitted, "but I'm the one being haunted by a seven-year-old in a ballerina costume.

Those who have privileges inevitably hold on to them, and hold tight, no matter how marginal the advantage involved, until compelled to bow to superior power of one sort or another.

The Japanese made a lot of new laws. One of the laws was that no Korean could be the boss of anything.

absolute usefulness to those who wielded it as an instrument. It told us things already known, suggested things that would not work, and made careers for people who already had jobs. 'We

The school made it very clear that women were entitled to positions of authority. That sense of entitlement allowed us to feel that we have a natural place in leadership in the world. That gave me a mental and emotional confidence.

Emperors may come and go, bringing more or less chaos, but the bureaucrats keep the wheels turning.

popular men who laugh at your jokes pose a threat which blatant villains can never command.

But, remember, a tyrant hates to admit he is one,' Faustus said quietly. 'The worse he is, the more he claims – and even believes – that traditional religion and democracy matter to him deeply and determine all his actions.

Dictators love to talk. It is remarkable how men who wield excessive sole power will be consistent in this: Given a captive audience, they all drone on for hours. And hours. The human brain can only concentrate for twenty minutes, ask any teacher. Dictators have rarely been despatched on a training course to learn that simple fact. Many dictators are completely untrained; tyranny comes to them naturally.

I would rather see Rome ruled by a man who once had to ask his accountant tricky questions before his steward could pay the butcher's bill than by some mad limb like Nero, who was brought up believing himself the son and the grandson of gods, and who thought wearing the purple gave him free rein to indulge his personal vanities, execute real talent, bankrupt the Treasury, burn half of Rome – and bore the living daylights out of paying customers in theatres!

All of math is mine.