Quotes About Authority

An interest willing to suppress speech was an interest willing to put its own power ahead of democracy.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

As Thoreau wrote in his 1849 essay "Civil Disobedience," "Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

His larger argument was that a president should not simply defer to the will and wishes of the Congress or the judiciary. Instead, Jackson was saying, the president ought to take his own stand on important issues, giving voice as best he could to the interests of the people at large.

Resolved Therefore that the General Assembly of this colony have the only and sole exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony and that every attempt to vest such power in any other person or persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as AMERICAN FREEDOM.50 Men

The courts, the press, and two presidents (Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge) took stands, however limited, against the politics of fear.

But where, say some, is the king of America?" Paine wrote. "I'll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Great Britain….For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other.

One plays by the conventions of politics in order to be in power when the hour calls for unconventional decisions.

To be tall and forbidding might command respect for a time, but not affection. To be overly familiar might command affection for a time, but not respect.

For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king, and there ought to be no other.

George Washington was the first and greatest such example, a man called to power not only because of his views but also for his reassuring bearing. He was a man with whom the people felt comfortable. Jackson's political appeal came out of the same tradition—a tradition in which a leader creates a covenant of mutual confidence between himself and the broader public.

Thomas Jefferson was his father's son. He was raised to wield power. By example and perhaps explicitly he was taught that to be great—to be heeded—one had to grow comfortable with authority and with responsibility.

The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying.

The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us — that is terrifying. THE END

psychopaths made the world go around.

If your regime is not strong enough to handle a joke, then you have no regime.

If I was to really get at the burr in my saddle, it's not politics — and this is, I think, probably a horrible analogy — but I look at politicians as, they are doing what inherently they need to do to retain power. Their job is to consolidate power. When you go to the zoo and you see a monkey throwing poop, you go, 'That's what monkeys do, what are you gonna do?' But what I wish the media would do more frequently is say, 'Bad monkey.

We're not going to get the jack-booted thugs stomping on a human face that you get in '1984' but we might get the 'Brave New World' where the biggest problem there is how to deal with the fact that everyone is so happy...[W]hat we're going to get is a nanny-type of fascism, if we get one at all...[S]imply because the nanny-state wants to hug you doesn't mean it's not tyrannical if you don't want to be hugged.

So as well as hating you, they also hate them – whoever they are – these faceless people who are sitting in judgement over them somewhere, legislating on what they can and can't say out loud.

You shouldn't take notice of anything that Henry tells you, you know,' he now says, with a chilly smile. 'After all, he is a politician.

I respect only those who stand up to me, but I find such people intolerable.

You people sit in your yamen [headquarters], and your horizon is your window sill,' he went on. `You are ignorant because no one dares to correct you. You might lose face and, what's more, some one might lose his head. You've retreated into your intellectual rat holes, having exposed only a posterior of vanity. Goddamn it, sir, you've all become insufferably stupid!

Power, power, power: how could the world be organized around the struggle for a thing so lonely and oppressive in the having of it?

That this was what jail was for: people who believed that they, rather than society, made the rules.