Quotes About Authority

The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good. A slaughter here, a little torture there. It becomes moral to do things that would be immoral if an ordinary individual did 'em.

Carol says we speak with one voice. What she doesn't say is that voice belongs to HER. There's only one song to sing these days--Carol's song--and if you aren't in harmony, you can stick a stone in your mouth and shut the hell up.

He thought the government was trying to enslave humanity by controlling grammar.

The people in charge can always justify doing terrible things in the name of the greater good.

He would think God was a dyke librarian, and he would know the fear of her.

Sabia que capitães de navio podem celebrar casamentos? O que pouca gente sabe é que bombeiros também podem outorgar divórcios.

In the West you will find men like that, fellows with gentle hands and hard, flat voices. Horses and dogs are instinctively loyal to such fellows, while yellowbellies and equivocators instinctively fear them. They make mediocre husbands, good officers of the law, and top-notch bank robbers.

They came to believe their doctors were holding back limited quantities of a cure, and attempted to take them hostage. They formed armies, congresses, religions; plotted rebellions, fomented treasons, practiced heresies.

No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of so much compressed wisdom.

Sometimes, the things They say, the laws They make, the way the world spins doesn't make any sense at all... Which is exactly why you have to ask "Why?" and keep on asking until you get the TRUTH...

America Where a man can say what he thinks, if he isn't afraid of his wife, his boss, his customer, his neighbors, or the government.

What becomes of someone who thinks he has all the power... and what becomes of someone who believes he has none?

On his desk in the Oval Office was a sign that read, "The Buck Stops Here," and as Truman would later observe, "The President—whoever he is—has to decide. He can't pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.

Yet here I am, Zahara thought now, queen of her own miniature kingdom, after all, duchess of the empty bunks, and our lady of the perpetual stomachache. Involuntary lust-object of a hundred emotionally frustrated prison guards and deprived stormtroopers. Dispenser of medicine, charged with keeping the inmates of the Imperial Prison Barge Purge alive long enough to be permanently detained on some remote prison moon.

There's more politics in the police department than the Catholic Church,

A vision of spirituality beyond authoritarianism.

There are evils . . . that men inflict upon one another, such as tyrannical domination of some of them over others. —THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED, III, 2

The Nagid expressed the idea in verse: Man's wisdom is in what he writes, good sense at the end of his pen; and using his pen he can climb to the height of the scepter in the hand of his king.14

Do you know what that word reign means? It means, "time in power." God said we're to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you're alive that is your time in power.

God, if You say I'm blessed then I believe I'm blessed. My checkbook may not say I'm blessed. The economy may not say I'm blessed. The medical report doesn't say I'm blessed. But God, I know You have the ultimate authority. Since You say I'm blessed, my report is I am blessed.

The Nile is mine; I made it

And there's nothing in all human space that scares me like human leadership scared of facts.

He had a smart crew, and if he spoke too much, they'd shut up and listen to him instead of volunteering their own

When meeting with powerful people about things that matter,' he'd said, 'never play yourself down.