Quotes About Authority

The judge, for instance, who signed the warrant for Charlie's arrest that last time he went into remand is still on the bench.

In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens. Everywhere

O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were!

But what is "public property" if not an oxymoron?

When the Bolsheviks, came to power in 1917, Jews were able to take government jobs for the first time – hence the connection, in the minds of peasants whose first sight of a Jew in a position of authority was a commissar come to requisition grain or conscript men for the Red Army, between Jewishness and the nastier aspects of communism.

Unlike other dictators, Stalin and his satraps never made the mistake of believing themselves beloved -- on the contrary they saw plots under every stone.

She had said, "Those people at the Gestapo, they know everything about a person." Mrs. Wallau had said, "That's all exaggeration. They only know what they've been told.

Since the same ruthless fist that had suppressed justice had also suppressed a few useless old customs,

She was part of a social network that included artists and activists who were always hatching what they called "disruptive strategies" aimed at undermining all forms of authority: cultural, economic, scientific. Mostly their disruptions involved artistic fashion shows full of uselessly beautiful GMOs and tissue mods that said something about global recolonization.

the power men everywhere wield over women . . . has become a model for every other form of exploitation and illegal control' [Adrienne Rich]

When people have rejected aristocracy, no longer believe that leadership is inherited at birth, no longer assume that the ruling class is endorsed by God, the argument about who gets to rule—who is the elite—is never over.

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."3 Strictly defined, a totalitarian regime is one that bans all institutions apart from those it has officially approved. A totalitarian regime thus has one political party, one educational system, one artistic creed, one centrally planned economy, one unified media, and one moral code.

the German sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky wrote that "absolute power is a structure, not a possession.

government policy.

They didn't just want to oppress us: they wanted us to thank them for it."81

I'll see if I can find someone in the Toland Police Department who doesn't use his brains to wipe his backside.

You're in the Courtyard. Whatever rules humans have for employers aren't my rules unless I say they're my rules. So I can hire you even though you don't have any idea what you're doing, and I can fire you for having stinky hair!

HE HAS TEETH. SHE HAS A GUN. THEY ARE THE LAW.

Monty blinked. "On what charge, sir?" "On the charge of being a pain in my ass," Burke growled. "And right now, that is good enough for an overnight stay in our facility.

The last time I visited the Hall, Uncle Daemon said you weren't allowed to have broccoli, because it makes you fart," Daemonar said. Tagg whined and gave the grocer a pleading look. "I might risk Prince Yaslana's displeasure," the grocer said, "but I'm not going to do anything that could stink up Lady Marian's home.

Simon stared at the juveniles, who immediately looked more subdued. Then he turned to Meg. "If they're annoying you, just bite them on the nose.

I wonder who gave the order to hunt down the people who ran the breeding farms. "I think those people are truly gone, and we shouldn't look too hard for them or ask too many questions.

If men could not control it or rule over it, a thing had no place in the world.

A leader needs to look beyond his own kind, needs the obedience of everyone