Quotes About Authority

The root of every rebellion (in every culture) must always be identified as pride, and the lust for autonomy.

The State is not the hope of the world; it is an institution grounded in the threat of violence, whether via capital punishments or petty bureaucratic intrusions.

Attaching "produced at Berkeley, Harvard, MIT" to a ridiculous argument immediately makes it cogent to many. That's part of life, but let's not pretend that it's rationality.

We tend to assume that if the existing authorities tell us to do anything short of swearing an oath to worship Satan, then we have to do it. This does not exhibit a mature theology of resistance.

The first lesson that a healthy Christian theocracy would have to learn is to be deeply suspicious of their own lofty pretensions.

Husbandry is the careful management of resources - It is stewardship. And when someone undertakes to husband a woman, he must understand that it cannot be done unless he acts with authority.

But a man who has not been the head of his home must confess his abdication as sin - He must treat it the same way he would treat theft, or adultery. It is disobedience.

A father must beware the false dichotomy between individualism and "patriarchalism." The individualist says to each person in the family that responsibility begins and ends with him. Only one person can be responsible for one thing. The "patriarchalist" approach would agree and then say that the only person responsible in the family is the Boss Man. If he is responsible, then no one else can ever do anything freely. Both approaches are erroneous.

True submission never grovels, and true authority never accepts flattery.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book for sinful leaders: once you get into power, take whatever you can from the people, but all in the name of a higher good. This higher good may be God, or patriotism, or humanistic brotherhood, or democracy, but what all such power-abusers really want is more power for themselves.

Discipline by principle means that your system of discipline makes sense. It is orderly. It is not a chaos of commandments that depend upon the emotional state of Mom or Dad at the time the directives are delivered.

So here is the foundational principle: Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. Everything else in all political economy is a footnote to that profound and glorious reality. And we don't need to pray in order to make that true. It was true before any of us were born. But we should pray that God gives us the vision to see and believe that. Why should we believe that? Well, we are called believers, after all.

Were the wise men placing Jesus and Mary in their debt with these very expensive gifts? Or were they showing their indebtedness? When our federal government today cuts a check, are they exercising authority or showing submission? This is not a hard question.

If someone takes human choices in the marketplace as his absolute, the end result will be a market in which the fundamental commodity will be the souls of men. But if someone takes the law of God as his direction, the end result will be a market in which a man can buy and sell his cabbages or cabinets or cars without getting permission from some functionary at the Department of Hubris.

Scripture focuses on the political rulers, and this is because it is where the fundamental challenge was mounted.

When the parent is qualified to discipline, he probably does not feel like it, and when he feels like it, he is probably not qualified.

Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind

Only those who are in-charge are tackled and criticized by others so criticism is something desirable and should not be resented.

A good man cannot be a master and a master cannot be a good man.

Power just means I can hurt you, and you can't hurt me back. That's not what you need from a ruler, even though it devolves into that from time to time. What you want is the kind of wisdom that illuminates the darkness.

There are no tyrants where there are no slaves. (El Filibusterismo)

Took over my city and I never asked permission to.

I'm a total control freak and love to participate in the design of every single aspect of life.

The power of the Dark Side cannot be dispersed among the masses. It must be concentrated in the few who are worthy of the honor.