Quotes About Authority

I think cops cause more accidents than they prevent. When you're driving and see a cop ahead, what do you do? Slam on the brakes and struggle to get your seatbelt on. Next to every accident you always see a police car. Coincidence? I think not.

Watching the evening news in 2011 is a strange time-travel experience. 'The CBS Evening News ' 'ABC World News' and 'NBC Nightly News' haven't changed their style over the decades, still going for that old-fashioned mix of voice-of-authority pomp and feel-good fluff. The difference is that people aren't watching.

And who died and made you boss?" But I knew a lost cause when I saw it and was already pulling my hair back with nimble fingers. Niko slapped a shoulder holster against my chest. "No one. Like all truly great dictators, I seized that power myself. Now finish up. We leave in five minutes.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will";

Science, knowledge, logic and brilliance might be useful tools but they didn't build highways or civil service systems. Power built highways and civil service systems. Power was what dreams needed, not power in the hand of the dreamer himself necessarily but power put behind the dreamer's dream by the man who it to put there, power that he termed "executive support".

When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know you have come into the presence of fire; that it is best not incautiously to touch that man; that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him. —WOODROW WILSON

Presiding over the "genuine blanket

They're really not trying to protect anyone from harm, they're just trying to keep their world smooth and under control. I

Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.

The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.

Almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

Reality is what you can get away with.

Government.... the scariest thing we face every Halloween... every day of every year!

under suitable conditions, cooperation can indeed emerge in a world of egoists without central authority. To

Abraham's willingness to plunge a dagger through the heart of his young son because God, without any explanation, ordered it. We learn in this story that the correctness of an action was not judged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.

once we realize that obedience to authority is mostly rewarding, it is easy to allow ourselves the convenience of automatic obedience.

the correctness of an action was not adjudged by such considerations as apparent senselessness, harmfulness, injustice, or usual moral standards, but by the mere command of a higher authority.

automatic-pilot device, like social proof, should never be trusted fully;