Quotes About Authority

COURTHOUSES WERE THEIR own special kind of madness.

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.

Tis a dainty thing to command, though 'twere but a flock of sheep.

In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.

I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

We cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.

The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others -- summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others.

Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police.

How fortunate for governments that people do not think. There is no thinking except in giving and executing commands. If it were otherwise human society could not exist.

A really failing society has a lot of rules (or laws).

The first man to fence in a piece of land, saying "this is mine" and who found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

The happiness of society is the end of government.

An orderly society cannot exist if every man may decide which laws he will obey.

Perhaps nothing in our society is more needed for those in positions of authority than accountability.

To be omnipotent but friendless is to reign.

Probably never in human history did we live in a society in which, at the microlevel of personal behavior, our lives were so strongly regulated.

If you struck your mother or your father, it was punishable by death because you struck at the whole society. You struck at the morality of the society itself. This is what we have lost.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion...th at in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing-you may know that your society is doomed.

Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle-dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no way you can govern a Chinese society.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

The state always poses a greater threat to society than whatever problem it purports to solve.

Oh captain my captain