Quotes About Authority

The government to you is what God is to agnostics--only to be invoked when your own well being is at stake.

Once, on a walk with the president, Senator Selden Spencer of Missouri tried to cheer Coolidge by pointing to the White House and asking, in a joking tone, who might live there. "Nobody," Coolidge replied, "they just come and go.

It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.

Others were of humbler background: those farmers who found themselves forced to kill off their piglets in a time of hunger because FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Administration ordained they must;

Silentiary (n.) An official whose job it is to command silence. I would like to have my very own silentiary, someone I can bring to the library and to the apartment next door. Sitzfleisch

she didn't understand a thing about Catholics. It's all praise Mary, she said, women doing all the hard work and letting men run the church and calling the shots for everyone.

Sullenberger later wrote about [air traffic controller] Harten, "his words let me know that he understood that these hard choices were mine to make, and it wasn't going to help if he tried to dictate a plan to me.

The media—stenographers to power.

Xander, it's a good thing you weren't some sort of Cossack general, back in the day. You get that tone of voice, that look on your face, and I'm not kidding... even I would follow you into hell.

that one thing I have control over? That shit is mine.

Dad lied to the policeman who came to my room—and he was the nice one. But he got shot, and this other guy is all hard and shit, and he comes pounding on my dad's door and starts yelling at him to get with the program!" "What's the program?

Officer Rivers," Dad said, his face stony. "You bothered to follow up?" The officer had super-fair skin, pitted a little from old acne, and it turned rosy in embarrassment. "My partner's a dick,

all Crick knew was that when he got to the ground, the whole fucking world seemed to be eighteen-year-olds calling him Second-goddamned-Lieutenant.

There just had to be something morally wrong about telling a ten-year-old he had to have government approval for sexual activity.

The question of paying taxes is a valid one today, particularly for people living under occupation or under an unjust regime. It was a valid one in ancient Israel as well—how much does one go along with the emperor, and when must one resist?

Inheriting the earth, for the psalm and for the Gospel, requires being humble, not in the sense of lowly, but in the sense of being able to listen to others, to share resources, to prioritize community rather than authority, to serve rather than to be served.

Thus, when Magi appear in ancient sources, kings should get nervous.

just as the Magi, seen now as kings, paid homage to Jesus by following his star, so the kings of the earth should pay homage to the emperor by following his sign.

Competition in robbery don't need competition boards

sorry Sartre, the hell is the bureaucrats .

Written laws are like spiders' webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

These decrees of yours are no different from spiders' webs. They'll restrain anyone weak and insignificant who gets caught in them, but they'll be torn to shreds by people with power and wealth.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience. Source?

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.