Quotes About Authority

I do not bind power, nor do I loose it.

He didn't sit. He rarely sat. Big hands massaging the back of his chair, he looked as if he was keeping the furniture from jumping off the floor. The smile enjoyed itself for another moment while smart eyes read every face. Then he decided that things weren't stirred up enough, so with a big voice accustomed to commanding billions of dollars, he told all of us, "I'll be dead before New Year's.

I'm convinced that no normal human being ever woke up one morning and said, "Dammit, my life doesn't have enough petty bureaucratic rules, zero-tolerance policies, censorship, and fear in it. How do I fix that?

Bear in mind, children, that they listen to you because you are kids—not because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us.

An army of donkeys led by a lion is more effective than an army of lions led by a donkey! â–  The primacy of politics in military affairs is absolute, and often works against military effectiveness.

Psittacus vbs alirum nmina discam: Hoc didic per m dcere, "Caesar, hav!

One understands why law clerks follow the Bluebook. But why a judge would direct his law clerks to do so, or even tolerate their doing so, is a mystery to me. Are judges sheep? Why should they care what kids at the Harvard Law Review consider proper abbreviation?

Humans do have authority over creation—but it is a delegated authority to care for animals as God would and not to destroy them. All life still belongs to the Creator of life, as it did the in the beginning.

My Chief Rabbit has told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here. --Bigwig

We must grow out of religion. It is either bugaboo, formalism, or hysteria. Besides, what proof is there that "the churches" know more about "God" than the Cockney sentry on duty outside the camp? We have only their say-so.

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, politicians. All three need supervision.

I would propose the following minimal guideline: extrabiblical sources stand in a hermeneutical relation to the New Testament; they are not independent, counterbalancing sources of authority. In other words, the Bible's perspective is privileged, not ours. However tricky it may be in practice to apply this guideline, it is in fact a meaningful rule of thumb that discriminates significantly between different approaches to New Testament ethics.

Beware of the interpreter who always quotes only the Haustafeln (e.g., Col. 3:22: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything") and never wrestles with Galatians 5:1 ("For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery")—or vice versa.

Those who can naively affirm the bumper-sticker slogan, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it," are oblivious to the question-begging inherent in the formulation: there is no escape from the imperative of interpreting the Word. Bumper-sticker hermeneutics will not do.

To use Matthew's own language, turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if it really is true that the meek will inherit the earth, if and only if it really is true that those who act on Jesus' words have built their house on a rock so that it will stand in the day of judgment. Turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.

Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto.

A second important sense in which Revelation stands in the tradition of the Jewish apocalypses is that it shares the question which concerned so many of the latter: who is Lord over the world?

If any have more of the government of thee than Christ, or if thou hadst rather live after any other laws than his, if it were at thy choice, thou art not his disciple.

If any have more of the government of thee than Christ, or if thou hadst rather live after any other laws than his, if it were at thy choice, thou art not his disciple (331).

What else is the law made for, but to be the rule of life, and the rule of judgment? Read Psal. i. and xv.; Matt. v. vii. and xxv.,

Direct. IV. Be a good husband to your wife, and a good father to your children, and a good master to your servants, and let love have dominion in all your government, that your inferiors may easily find, that it is their interest to obey you. For interest and self-love are the natural rulers of the world.

If only preaching be necessary, let us have none but preachers. What needs there, then, such a stir about government? But if discipline (in its place) be necessary too, what is it but enmity to men's salvation to exclude it?

Meditation puts reason in its authority and preeminence. It helpeth to deliver it form its captivity to the sense, and setteth it again upon the throne of the soul. When reason is silent, it is usually subject; for when it is asleep the senses domineer. . . . Reason is at the strongest when it is most in action. Now, meditation produceth reason into act (573).

Esteem the church fathers and other writers, but value none of them as equivalent to the word of God.