Quotes About Authority

Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and individual conscience of mankind.

To dragoon man into the adoption of what we think right, is an intolerable tyranny.

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

What power there is in the word my.

The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!" "Who cares?

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

is not altogether a matter of fanfaronade when the American citizen calls himself a "sovereign." A member of a free democracy is, in a sense, a sovereign. He

A member of a free democracy is, in a sense, a sovereign. He has no superior. He

Each great company will be known as controlled by one master mind. The reason for this lies in the great superiority of personal management over management by boards and committees. This

there are yet mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and

THAT A FREE MAN IS A SOVEREIGN, BUT THAT A SOVEREIGN CANNOT TAKE "TIPS.

They are men who have no superiors, by

The office of the church is ministerial—to publish and make known the word of God; but not magister ial and absolute—to make it Scripture, or unmake it, as she is pleased to allow or deny her stamp.

Quote the Scripture rather than men for thy judgment.

So that now all those ways whereby God directly made known his mind to this people, are resolved into this one of the Scriptures, which we are to receive as the undoubted word of God, containing in a perfect rule of faith and life, and to expect no other revelation of his mind to us.

Bless God for the translation of the Scriptures. The word is our sword. By being translated, this sword is drawn out of its scabbard.

The mind of a General makes one a General.

i suspect that the first dictator of this country will be called coach.

By its nature, government was either small and personal, something on the level of a town hall meeting, or it was tyranny, with the few ruling the many for their own benefit, no matter how representational that government might be in theory.

The less government we have the better—the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual. . . . —Politics Ralph Waldo Emerson C.E. 1844

My brother, Major General Lawrence Heinlein, once told me that there are only two promotions in life that mean a damn: from buck private to corporal, and from colonel to general officer. I made corporal decades ago Ã¢â'¬Â¦ but now at long last I know what he meant about the other. Thank you.17

The public be damned.

In further institutionalizing the great power of the majority, we are making the individual come to distrust himself. We are giving him a rationalization for the unconscious urging to find an authority that would resolve the burdens of free choice. We are tempting him to reinterpret the group pressures as a release, authority as freedom, and that this quest assumes a moral guise makes it only the more poignant.

Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.