Quotes About Authority

We, Seth, Emperor of Azania, Chief of the Chiefs of Sakuyu, Lord of Wanda and Tyrant of the Seas, Bachelor of the Arts of Oxford University, being in this the twenty-fourth year of our life, summoned by the wisdom of Almighty God and the unanimous voice of our people to the throne of our ancestors, do hereby proclaim...

That's your little mob in there,' said Grimes; 'you let them out at eleven.' 'But what am I to teach them?' said Paul in sudden panic. 'Oh, I shouldn't try to teach them anything, not just yet, anyway. Just keep them quiet.

We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit.

I do not aspire to advise my sovereign in her choice of servants.

Let us give thanks to our father, leader, and creator for our happy lives!" "Stankovskaya, to hear your anti-Soviet talk, one can hardly believe that you were a member of a municipal committee!" "Yes, and to hear you people one can hardly believe that you're not on the prison staff. Why don't you call the guards now and report this conversation? You might get some clean underwear as a reward, and then you wouldn't stink so much.

the Yale professor Stanley Milgram's infamous 1961 experiment sought to investigate the extent to which ordinary people would obey the orders of figures in authority to inflict pain on others. On one side of a room divided by a one-way mirror, a scientist ordered a volunteer to deliver electrical shocks of ever-increasing strength to a person strapped to a chair on the other side of the room whenever she or he gave wrong answers to questions read from a questionnaire.

No, but–" There are no 'buts' here, Miss Cleary.  If you are to remain a lab assistant here – in fact, if you are to remain a student at this institution – you will follow the rules, or you will be out of here faster than you can blink your baby blue eyes.

Until the great mobs could be educated into a moral sense, someone must cry: Thou shalt not!

A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

Take off that darn fur coat!...Or maybe you'd like to have us open all the windows.

Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

I talk with the authority of failure.

It's a bad town unless you're on top of it

Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Your mother formed an incorrect opinion of you and, naturally, you agreed with her. Children always think their parents are right. But in this case, your mother was entirely wrong. Think about it. Your mother is an overpowering individual

Ida had always been different. At school, when all the kids used to play church, and one would be the preacher, another the preacher's wife, a deacon, and the choir leader, and some would be the parishioners who had come to the church, Ida said she wanted to be God, because she was the only one who knew how to do it. Of

He assured them, with a great and mighty authority, that his God was not a vengeful God, but one of goodness…love…forgiveness…and joy.

Legitimacy is the elixir of political power. The strongest is never strong enough to be the master, Jean-Jaques Rousseau observed, unless he translates strength into right and obedience into duty. Only democracy has that authority in the world today.

Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it.

Good government is about limited power but clear lines of authority. It is about giving officials autonomy, discretion, and the ability to exercise their own judgment. It requires recruiting bright, devoted people who are inspired by the chance to serve their country and earn respect for doing it. This is not something that can be created overnight, but it can be done. Taiwan and South Korea were not born with good government.

common element? A competent, well-functioning, trusted state—the quality of government.

America has become what Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy.

The greatest moral failing of meritocracy is the belief that your success, your higher perch in society, makes you superior in any fundamental sense. After all, in democracies, at least, the people's wishes are the ultimate source of authority. So, let's be clear, as we navigate this pandemic and future crises, people need to listen to the experts. But the experts also need to listen to the people.

King Lear, having been in power for decades, can no longer hear anything but flattery, banishing the one person—his own daughter Cordelia—who dares to speak to him truthfully.