Quotes About Authority

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations.

Fundamentalist models of scriptural authority Ã¢â'¬â€œ and even official attitudes towards it in non-fundamentalist churches Ã¢â'¬â€œ elide this historical dimension by treating the Bible as in some sense a single book.

It has been popularly assumed that the Bible, bearing the stamp of Divine authority, must be complete, perfect, and unimpeachable in all its parts, and a thousand difficulties and incoherent doctrines have sprung out of this theory.23

There is a widespread belief that the contents of the Bible were decided at a number of Church councils, no earlier than the fourth century CE, and that they excluded a substantial body of works that the Church authorities regarded as heretical. The third part of the book contests that belief.

The books which were actively excluded (Chapter 11) were in nearly all cases considerably later and less reliable than those that were accepted.

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence . . . defines what can and cannot be done to her.

How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.

When we oppose God's delegated authority, we oppose God Himself.

We must always keep in mind all legitimate authority is from God, and is given for protection, provision, and peace.

True worship is revealed by who we obey, not who we sing to.

Listen to Professor Compton, would you? He's a professor and he has a neck beard. You don't so he wins this round.

Yes," he said in return, and his voice cracked somewhat. "Yes, Comrade General Secretary." "And now," Stalin said, "let's have some soup, shall we?" Beria's heart sank. He still had too much work to do. "Oh, not you, Beria," the Vozhd said. "You are excused. Get the hell out of here and go do your job for a change. No soup for you.

That's the problem with leadership cults. They're red hot on getting shit done, once the big man has spoken, but not so good at weighing up whether that shit should have been done in the first place.

Look at my daemons, peasant.

The eighteenth-century French tax, in the words of the same authority, "soon became honeycombed with abuses" and degenerated into "a completely unequal and thoroughly arbitrary imposition upon the less well-to-do classes,

What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

A man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion.

How do you become First in command, when you're second in command? You kill the guy that's first in command!

Laymen are not allowed to carry around the blessed Host to throw at people.

A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.

contrary to an all-too-common misjudgement, it is not the case that theology and science are chalk and cheese, a matter of airy opinion compared with solid fact. Nor does the essential difference between them lie in a contrast between belief on the basis of submission to an unquestionable authority and belief based on grounds of rational motivation.

Do you understand the lesson of the sword and the charge I have laid on you?" "Yes, mother. Kill heretics, don't sleep around, obey the king. But… we don't have kings in America, and I think being a heretic is protected by the First Amendment.

Syntax, like government, can only be obeyed. It is therefore of no use except when you have something particular to command such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.