Quotes About Authority

You summon us, we follow. You order us to be free and so we will be.

there may be greater glory in obedience where the desire to obey is less

Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.

When asked by a woman from Attica:'Why are you Spartan women the only ones who can rule men?', she said: 'Because we are the only ones who give birth to men.

For there is no virtue, the honor and credit for which procures a man more odium than that of justice; and this, because more than any other, it acquires a man power and authority among the common people.

no beast is more savage than man when possessed with power answerable to his rage.

They insist upon the shaving of the moustache, I think, in order that they may accustom the young men to obedience in the most trifling matters.

It was] better to set up a monarchy themselves than to suffer a sedition to continue that must certainly end in one.

For lack of rules (which the undisciplined sector of the young call freedom) sets masters over one which are more tyrannical than the teachers and trainers familiar from childhood – these masters are the desires, when they have broken out of prison, so to speak.

For kings indeed we have, who wear the marks and assume the titles of royalty, but as for the qualities of their minds, they have nothing by which they are to be distinguished from their subjects.

To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice.

For lack of rules (which the undisciplined sector of the young call freedom) 3 sets masters over one which are more tyrannical [D] than the teachers and trainers familiar from childhood – these masters are the desires, when they have broken out of prison, so to speak. Just

In fact Cleopatra was indebted to Fulvia for teaching Antony to obey a wife's authority, for by the time he met her he had already been quite broken in and schooled to accept the way of women.

In a harangue to the people, he said, with reference to these measures, that he had proscribed all he could think of, and as to those who now escaped his memory, he would proscribe them at some future time.

For it may happen to the commonwealth, as to the serpent in the fable, whose tail, rising in rebellion against the head, complained, as of a great grievance, that it was always forced to follow, and required that it should be permitted by turns to lead the way. And taking the command accordingly, it soon inflicted , by its senseless courses, mischiefs in abundance upon itself, while the head was torn and lacerated with following, contrary to nature, a guide that was deaf and blind.

Dr Tag isch nid färn wenn dä erst Bundesrat sy Joint raucht!

T]he best analogy for the Athenian democracy is a ship without a captain. On such a ship, the crew do their duty outstandingly well as long as fear of the open sea or the threat of a storm induces them to cooperate with one another and obey the helmsman. But when there is no cause for alarm, they start to ignore their superiors and to fall out with one another.

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.

Unlimited trust should only be placed in the real Word of the Revelation that we encounter in the faith transmitted by the Church.

I think we must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?

The representative of the highest spiritual authority of the earth is glad, indeed boasts, of being the son of a humble but robust and honest laborer.

Learn how to be a policeman, because that cannot be improvised. As regards being pope, you will see later. Anybody can be pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.

Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?

Do you know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?