Quotes About Authority

Christian theological history is filled with stories of groups who have developed theories of the election of themselves to salvation and the damnation of others; theories that demonstrate that their particular group has been exclusively endowed with divine truth, so that they possess a unique mission to the world and have a unique authority within it.

The institutions that claim to represent God, when they are not ignored altogether, are treated like other human institutions that have to earn their right to a hearing by the value of what they say, and not by virtue of who is saying it. Today, authority has to earn respect by the intrinsic value of what it says, not by the force of its imposition.

fundamentalist religion does. It refutes not by evidence but by authority

Never give people power over you until you know how to get rid of them.

People today do not know the difference between a bombardier and a brigadier

That to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery.

Unless the health authorities say schools have to shut down, I don't see why we should keep her home. She's not sick.

Yes, I think you'll find that all the best teachers are old bats.

Grandma saved herself a lot of bother by not being the kind of person you question.

Royal[s] can't manage on their own.

But even a nation of laws must understand the limits of legalism.

Yesterday's political criminals are on today's postage stamps!

How reason is just another weapon of control.

The wrong people have all the rights.

The law is simply human will, written down.

To call any music subversive, to say that a set of pitches and rhythms could pose a threat to real power . . . ludicrous. And yet, from Plato to Pyongyang, that endless need to legislate sounds. To police the harmonic possibilities as if there were no limits to music's threat.

The tens of thousands of fans posting to online forums have more control over what happens next than any of the upper brass.

Time alters what can be owned, and who may do the owning.

is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak, either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, or universities. Lawyers speak for them.

If nobody's losing money or getting hurt, the law doesn't give a fuck.

Humankind is a thug. The law is a goon.

So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt.

but no one could control Mark Littleberry; the man was fundamentally uncontrollable.

How much the world lost that September is immeasurable. The complementarity of the bomb, its mingled promise and threat, would not be canceled by the decisions of heads of state; their frail authority extends not nearly so far. Nuclear fission and thermonuclear fusion are not acts of Parliament; they are levers embedded deeply in the physical world, discovered because it was possible to discover them, beyond the power of men to patent or to hoard.