Quotes About Authority

Saying what made people in power think well of you was as much a habit for Breguswith as showing her curves was for Gwladus.

Beside her, Edwin stirred. Rædwald the overking was dead and under the dirt. Now Edwin was overking. Hild could feel him swelling like bread.

She understood why a king often threatened violence. It felt good, and it worked.

To hear you talk is like hearing him talk when he first become king.

A man was lord of his own hall, king or no.

It was best to approach royalty with answers, not questions.

Guns can be a distraction, a dangerous focus of one's authority, a crutch. Many come to depend on them: take away the gun and you take away their identity.

Holding secrets, her mother said, made a man feel mighty.

She reeked of power: richly dressed, strong-boned, uncanny. She laid her hand on her seax and gave herself a long look. Begu was right. No one would be fool enough to get in the way of this woman. She looked like a pale and unearthly queen.

The revolt always begins when the steward wants to be king. A lesson the Franks never seen to learn.

Hild looked down at the water, at herself, a woman. A woman who knows. Standing like a queen. Light of the world. Queen of the world.

A sword given to his hand by a king: a shield and a path.

If a lord was frightening, a noble lady was terrifying.

If she used weapons the way she used words, no one would stand against her; they'd have no idea where the stroke would fall next.

Command isolated her more effectively than a deadly disease.

It was only now that she understood, for the first time, that despite her title, her uniform, and the two stars on her shoulder, she was as helpless as any native herder or farmer or sailor.

In society just as in the soul, when hierarchies abdicate the appetites rule.

Wise politics is the art of invigorating society and weakening the State.

It is no longer enough for the citizen to submit—the modern state demands accomplices.

Reformar la sociedad por medio de leyes es el sueño del ciudadano incauto y el preámbulo discreto de toda tiranía. La ley es forma jurídica de la costumbre o atropello a la libertad.

The plethora of laws is a sign that nobody knows anymore how to command intelligently. Or that nobody knows anymore how to obey freely. When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free.

The political presence of the masses always culminates in a hellish apocalypse.

Das widerlichste und groteskeste der Schauspiele ist das der Überlegenheit des lebenden Professors über das tote Genie.

Only those who never moved a finger to acquire them should talk about money and power.