Quotes About Authority

A society whose members are helpless need idols.

Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.

The average person believes that the scientist is a priest who knows all the answers and who is in direct touch with all that he wants to know, just as some people are satisfied that the priest, if he is in touch with God, if he can see him once in a while he feels he has some part in this communication with God.

If by anarchy one means that the individual does not acknowledge any kind of authority, the answer is to be found in what has been said about the difference between rational and irrational authority. Rational authority—like a genuine ideal—represents the aims of growth and expansion of the individual. It is, therefore, in principle never in conflict with the individual and his real, and not his pathological, aims.

Even a person of mediocre intelligence and ability can easily run a state once he or she is in the seat of power.

formulated by John Dewey that I express the thought in his words: "The serious threat to our democracy," he says, "is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries.

This phenomenon, of seeing the emperor's garments although he is naked, has existed for many millennia. This is how even the stupidest people were able to become regents. They proclaimed their belief that they were wise—and it was, for their people, usually already too late by the time the ruler had to prove his wisdom.

If the social structure is one of submission to authority—overt authority or the anonymous authority of the market and public opinion—his concept of God must be infantile and far from the mature concept, the seeds of which are to be found in the history of monotheistic religion.

Even to begin to understand the problem of faith one must differentiate between rational and irrational faith. By irrational faith I understand the belief (in a person or an idea) which is based on one's submission to irrational authority. In contrast, rational faith is a conviction which is rooted in one's own experience of thought or feeling.

religious ideology is needed in order to keep people from losing discipline and thus threatening social coherence.

Luther established a purely patriarchal form of Christianity in Northern Europe that was based on the urban middle class and the secular princes. The essence of this new social character is submission under patriarchal authority, with work as the only way to obtain love and approval. Behind the Christian façade arose a new secret religion, "industrial religion," that is rooted in the character structure of modern society, but is not recognized as "religion.

The problem of education hinges on this point. If parents were more developed themselves and rested in their own center, the opposition between authoritarian and laissez-faire education would hardly exist. Needing this being-authority, the child reacts to it with great eagerness; on the other hand, the child rebels against pressure or neglect by people who show by their own behavior that they themselves have not made the effort they expect from the growing child.)

The question of who claimed defense rightly is usually decided by the victors, and sometimes only much later by more objective historians.

Fate may be rationalized philosophically as natural law or as destiny of man, religiously as the will of the Lord, ethically as duty - for the authoritarian character it is always a higher power outside the individual, towards which the individual can do nothing but submit. The authoritarian character worships the past. What has been, will eternally be. To wish or to work for something that has not yet been before is crime or madness.

Simultaneous love for authority and the hatred against those who are powerless are typical of the authoritarian character

Dieser Theaterkritiker konnte die selbstverständlichsten und unstreitigsten Dinge äußern, sobald er es war, der sie behauptete, wirkten sie unglaubwürdig und reizten zum Widerspruch.

The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom.

There was always a screen behind which one could hide— a superior who in turn had his superior— orders, instructions, duties, commands— and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called— there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity.

For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress--to the future. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief.

A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends.

that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole

He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but there was, nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone.

A word of command has made these silent figures our enemies; a word of command might transform them into our friends. At some table a document is signed by some persons whom none of us knows, and then for years together that very crime on which formerly the world's condemnation and severest penalty fall, becomes our highest aim.

But is the primary law of this world, where the old rule the young, that one must serve one's time. It is no question of ability. Else what would become of old dodderers who cling to their power?