Quotes About Authority

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man

The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss.

There is no knowledge that is not power.

Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves.

We do not believe our own thought; we must serve somebody; we must quote somebody; we dote on the old and the distant; we are tickled by great names; we import the religion of other nations; we quote their opinions; we cite their laws.

Speech is power; speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.

There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.

It makes no difference whether the appeal is to numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul. The position men have given to Jesus, now for many centuries of history, is a position of authority. It characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts.

Whence is your power? From my nonconformity. I never listened to your people's law, or to what they call their gospel, and wasted my time.

The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

Power is in nature the essential measure of right.

The Shastras say that a son who does not obey his father has no place in heaven.