Quotes About Authority

Charismatic authority, which Max Weber contrasts with "traditional" and "rational-legal" types of authority, is described by him as repudiating the past and representing a "specifically revolutionary force.

The classical manifestation is the outlook of the religious prophet who says, "It is written . . ., but I say unto you. . . ." Weber's implication is that charismatic authority occurs in the context of a social movement that may arise outside of and in any event is in some manner opposed to the existing order—a radical movement, be it of religious, political, cultural, or other complexion.

His followers, who are also typically his disciples, freely accept his leadership because they perceive him to be the possessor of extraordinary qualities or powers; and this "recognition" of his special qualification is seen by Weber as decisive for the validity of charisma.[

Since the party was the ruling political authority in the Soviet state, it was not as chief of government but as head of the party that Lenin acted as supreme leader.

The point is that the powers on which he chiefly relied in exercising this forceful individual leadership were his powers of persuasion.

Regional and local organs of authority set up on a sovereign basis would only stand in the way of solving these tasks. Hence it was necessary to leave in the hands of the central authority "all functions of importance to the country

Stalin was not temperamentally well constituted for success as an organizer and administrator.

Not only did such an ideology legitimize the young man's resentment against the various forms of established authority, it identified his enemies as history's, bestowed higher meaning on his urge to live a life of combat against forces of evil, and sanctified his quest for vindictive triumphs along the way.

succession means legitimacy as well as power.

It involves the passage to the new leader of something of the authority possessed by his predecessor, the general recognition of him as rightful head of the political community.

But the situation is very different—and the succession problem far more difficult—in a new state in which supreme authority is centered in the personality of the leader-founder, and in which no formal office of supreme leader has been created.

His rebelliousness began to appear in the first of the two schools, flared up strongly soon after he entered the second, and continued to develop. By the time he left the seminary in 1899 he was a committed revolutionary, in revolt against that great punitive system of paternalistic authority known as tsarism.

Lenin's personal charisma was neither institutionalized in an office of supreme party leadership (as we have already noted, he had held none), nor was it easily transferable to a successor. No one among the leaders of the party succeeded to Lenin's extraordinary authority.

discrepancy between power and authority thus existed in early post-Lenin Bolshevism. Powerful though he had become in the party, Stalin was not yet widely perceived and accepted as Lenin's successor in the role of supreme leader of the party.

Two years after his death, by which time Stalin was far along in his march to power, the succession problem was still unresolved. Stalin delivered the political report of the Central Committee before the Fourteenth Congress, appearing in a role that had traditionally been Lenin's and that Zinoviev had taken at the two preceding party congresses. But he was not an acknowledged new supreme leader of the party with authority in any way comparable to Lenin's.

Power doesn't corrupt, it reveals.

If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent if you believe the military, nothing is safe.

Remember, your own image and presence are materials you can control.

The leader who tries to change the group's spirit directly—yelling, demanding, disciplining—actually plays into the teenage dynamic and reinforces the desire to rebel.

Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want. Entire books could be written about favorites who fell out of favor by taking their status for granted, for daring to outshine.

what people cannot control, you can control for them.

Money must circulate to bring power.

So after that I had a new rule. If I'm hired by the plant engineer, I only go over his head if I'm in project failure mode. If the project is going to fail, then I'll go over his head. But as long as the project is going to come out, I never go over his head. Now, that's a rule I still follow today.

Power is a game. This cannot be repeated too often!