Quotes About Authority

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

It might be said that all knowledge is linked to the essential forms of cruelty.

Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.

You have nothing to do but mention the quantum theory, and people will take your voice for the voice of science, and belive anything.

Law is a Bottomless-Pit, it is a Cormorant, a Harpy, that devours every thing.

If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control.

He who controls the spice controls the universe.

And thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of nature.

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

There is no debate here, just scientists and non-scientists. And since the subject is science, the non-scientists don't get a vote.

Religion is based on dogma and belief, whereas science is based on doubt and questioning.

The ruling power is always faced with the question, 'In such and such circumstances, what would you do?', whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.

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.

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.

Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor).

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket.

Our defense is not in our armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order.

The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.

Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State.

The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power.

Science blogs bore me. When everyone is an expert, no one is an expert.

The credulous ... advance the authority of hearsay in place of reasons for possible success or facts that can be demonstrated.

Anarchism is a theory of political science and is opposed to government in the political sense.

In science, the old men are usually wrong. But in politics, the old men are wise, counsel caution, and in the end are often right.