Quotes About Authority

Das Gericht will nichts von Dir. Es nimmt Dich auf wenn Du kommst und es entläßt Dich wenn du gehst.

The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.

We're only being punished because you reported us. Otherwise nothing would have happened to us, even if they found out what we did. Can that be called justice?

First of all, the free man is superior to the bound man. Now the man is in fact free: he can go wherever he wishes, the entrance to the Law alone is denied to him, and this only by one person, the doorkeeper. If he sits on the stool at the side of the door and spends the rest of his life there, he does so of his own free will; the story mentions no element of force.

Sa svog naslonja?a vladao si svijetom. Tvoje mišljenje bilo je pravilno, svako drugo bilo je ludo, prenapeto, nenormalno. Pri tome, bilo je tvoje samopouzdanje tako veliko da nisi ni morao biti dosljedan,a ipak si još uvijek imao pravo.

houses which in their totality cough and shiver with fever day and night, where one has to eat meat, where ex-hangmen dislocate one's arms if one resists the injections, and where beard-stroking Jewish doctors, as callous towards Jew as Christian, look on.

If the doorkeeper sees clearly, one might have doubts about that, but if the doorkeeper is deceived, the deception must necessarily carry over to the man. In that case, teh doorkeeper is indeed no deceiver, but is so simpleminded that he should be dismissed immediately from service. You have to realize that the state of deception in which the doorkeeper finds himself doesn't harm him but harms the man a thousandfold.

I don't even consider them guilty; it's the organization that's guilty, it's the high officials who are guilty.

You see, Willem, he admits that he doesn't know the Law and yet he claims he's innocent.

I don't agree with that opinion...for if you accept it, you have to consider everything the doorkeeper says as true. But you've already proved conclusively that that's not possible. No, said the priest, you don't have to consider everything true, you just have to consider it necessary. A depressing opinion, said K. Lies are made into a universal system

we're only being punished because you reported us. Otherwise nothing would have happened, even if they had found out what we had done. Do you call that justice? Both of us have proved ourselves as guards over a long period of time, especially me - you have to admit we did a good job from the authorities' point of view...

Because I don't even consider them guilty; it's the organization that's guilty, it's the high officials who are guilty

Usted es muy severo, dijo el alcalde, pero multiplique esa severidad por mil y seguirá siendo una minucia comparada con la severidad que aplica la administración contra si misma

do I really have to carry on getting tangled up with the chattering of base functionaries like this? - and they admit themselves that they are of the lowest position.  They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway.  It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. 

En de man is werkelijk vrij, hij kan gaan en staan waar hij wil, alleen de toegang tot de wet is hem verboden en dat dan nog door één enkeling, door de poortwachter.

Cellat, günümüzde, soylu bir memur deÄŸildir; kamu iÅŸlevinin pragmatik ruhu ona iyi bir maaÅŸ saÄŸlar. Sonuç olarak, her namuslu memurun içinde niçin bir cellat uyuyor olmas?n? […] Onlar [memurlar] canl? ve dönüÅŸebilen varl?klar? ele al?p onlar? ölü ve en ufak dönüÅŸüme müsait olmayan arÅŸiv sicil kay?tlar? haline getirirler.

The animal wrests the whip from the master and flails itself in order to become the master

guards try to steal the shirts off the backs of arrested men

Tú estabas dotado para mí de eso tan enigmático que poseen los tiranos, cuyo derecho está basado en la propia persona, no en el pensamiento.

Since everyone strives for the law, says the man, how is it that in all these years nobody but me has asked for admittance? The doorkeeper sees that the man is at an end, and, to reach his fading senses, bellows his answer, None but you could gain admittance here, for this entrance was meant only for you. I shall close it now.

There's no way at all that you can defend yourself against this Court, you have to admit your guilt. Make a full confession as soon as you can

For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whose rights are based on their person and not on reason. At least so it seemed to me.

Whenever I started doing something you didn't like and you threatened me with the prospect of failure, my reverence for your opinion was so great that failure was, even if only at a later time, inevitable. I lost confidence in my own abilities. I was unsteady, doubtful. The older I got, the more material you could hold against me as proof of my worthlessness; gradually, in a certain regard, you began actually to be right.

The Wild West attracts cowboys. A sheriff is a good thing.