Quotes About Authority

Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.

I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern without any superhuman authority behind it.

I have reached an age where if someone tells me to wear socks, I dont have to

An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion soon degenerates. For force always attract men of low morality.

The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice.

For rebelling against every form of authority fate has punished me by making me an authority.

I was made acutely aware how far superior an education that stresses independent action and personal responsibility is to one that relies on drill, external authority and ambition.

Tidak ada yang lebih merusak martabat pemerintah dan hukum negeri dibanding meloloskan undang-undang yang tidak bisa ditegakkan.

Second, the teacher should be given extensive liberty in the selection of the material to be taught and the methods of teaching employed by him. For it is true also of him that pleasure in the shaping of his work is killed by force and exterior pressure.

The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.

Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.

Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit. / Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

You will renounce all relations with me. You will make my meals and tidy my house. You are my servant and nothing more. [rules for his first wife Mileva Maric and his second wife Elsa Einstein]

The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the sense to see and the will to do.

Readers are bullied in schoolyards and in locker-rooms as much as in government offices and prisons.

But who shall be the master? The writer or the reader?

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.

It is possible to argue that the really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power. Marx and Sorel have been influential in the modern world, not so much because they were best-sellers (Sorel in particular was not at all a widely read author), but because among their few readers were two men, called respectively Lenin and Mussolini.

But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.

This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.