Quotes About Authority

Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.

Nevertheless, the more odious restrictions – such as being confined at night to ghettos, or even being expelled from a nation – were placed upon them by the state, not the Roman Catholic Church.

does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.

As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship with God.

The only common feature of the three successful Reformations was their rejection of papal authority; otherwise they were quite at odds.

The Church never endorsed the notion of the divine right of kings. That was first proclaimed by James I of England (1566–1625), a Protestant after whom the King James Version of the Bible is named. Instead, the Catholic Church always asserted that its authority was greater than that of monarchs.

Even more important, Islam holds that the universe is inherently irrational—that there is no cause and effect—because everything happens as the direct result of Allah's will at that particular time. Anything is possible. Attempts at science, then, are not only foolish but also blasphemous, in that they imply limits to Allah's power and authority.53 Therefore, Muslim scholars study law (what does Allah require?), not science.

This 'shocking realism'52 has often surprised and upset Augustine's readers. But, given the immense authority of the writer, this view shaped Christian political sensibilities ever after: Christian writers could not condemn suggestions for liberalizing the state, or even for dispensing with monarchies. Moreover, by affirming the secularity of kingship the Church made it possible to examine the basis for worldly power and the interplay of rights and rule.

From the start, the German princes who supported Luther were not going to allow themselves to be exploited or commanded by religious leaders again. Henceforth, they would rule both Church and state. In this they were vigorously supported by Martin Luther, whose 'advice to the German princes who embraced Protestantism was that they compel their subjects to submit to religious instruction and allow them to hear only authorized preachers'.

The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?

A regulator is part protector, part godfather. He dislikes a public spectacle; he is most effective when he can wield his power discreetly, by merely threatening to act or by cajoling others to do his bidding.

When the subject was money, central authority had always been taboo; it was a demon that terrified the people. Fear of this demon had kept the country without any effective organization of its finances for seventy-five years. Now, three-quarters of a century after Andrew Jackson, the ghost was slain.

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.

The first axiom of Marx Scientist is that everything they tell you is a lie. The second axiom is that it doesn't matter, since you are lying too. The third axiom is 'Kill all liars!

The American liberal is certainly not averse to the power of the state, provided it is exerted by liberals, and exerted against conservatives.

Top-down solutions have a tendency to confiscate problems from those whose problems they are.

What makes a political order legitimate, in the conservative view, is not the free choices that create it, but the free choices that it creates.

One thing is immediately apparent, and this is that many statements made in the first-person case are epistemologically privileged.

The worst mistake in politics is the mistake made by Lenin – the mistake of destroying the institutions and procedures whereby mistakes can be recognized. Something

society is not identical with the state. Society is composed of people, freely associating and forming communities of interest that socialists have no right to control and no authority to outlaw. To

At the same time, instead of limiting the power of the state, alleged human rights have begun to enhance that power, and to bring the state into all our disputes on the side of the favoured party. Rights

A society governed by consent does not necessarily issue from a social contract, whether actual or implied. It is a society in which dealings between citizens, and between citizens and those in authority, are consensual, in the manner of daily courtesies, games of football, theatrical events or family meals. As Adam Smith made clear, order may emerge from consensual dealings. But it emerges 'by an invisible hand', and not, as a rule, because someone has imposed it. In

The common law of England is proof that there is a real distinction between legitimate and illegitimate power, that power can exist without oppression, and that authority is a living force in human conduct. English law, I discovered, is the answer to Foucault.

So conceived, the English police force served to emphasize a fundamental truth about the English law, which is that it exists not to control the individual but to free him. The