Quotes About Authority

After seizing state power, the victors have a powerful interest in moving the revolution out of the streets and into the museums and schoolbooks as quick as possible, lest the people decide to repeat the experience.

modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in imperial rhetoric, as a "civilizing mission.

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice!

The popes who succeeded John XXIII were in clericalism's grip, which is why the reforms of his council didn't have a chance.

A power structure that is accountable only to itself will always end by abusing the powerless. If exposed, it will ask, paternalistically, to be allowed to repair the damage on its own.

Of what real value is a title? The power is the only important thing

The law may upset reason but reason may never upset the law, or our whole society will shred like an old tatami. The law may be used to confound reason, reason must certainly not be used to overthrow the law.

Friday, 16th. The most part fine, Clear weather. Punished Henry Stevens, Seaman, and Thomas Dunster, Marine, with 12 lashes each, for refusing to take their allowance of Fresh Beef. Employed taking on board Wine and Water. Wind Easterly.

You need to do more than practice as only when you do will you have the right to preach it

Anything can be brought into existence with a powerful mind and a willing signature

Republican theory clearly stated that the people held all political power, and only they could delegate authority to a government. The people were free to change governments at will. They didn't need permission from incumbents.

As a young man ] I came to the conclusion that the church was just a bunch of fascists that supported Franco. I stopped going on Sunday mornings and watched the birds with my father instead.

People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will?

Most academic battles involve space or faculty appointments and promotions.

I am sure this occasionally bothered Francis, even though he obviously knew that most High Table life is dominated by pedantic, middle aged men incapable of either amusing or educating him in anything worthwhile.

While not every drought or adverse climatic change resulted in the breakdown of public authority, many did.

The Knights of Malta issues its own passports, stamps, and money, and carries on full diplomatic relations with seventy countries.

At the end of the fifteenth century, the Church largely controlled the regulatory powers that have since been assumed by governments. The Church dominated important areas of law, recording deeds, registering marriages, probating wills, licensing trades, titling land, and stipulating terms and conditions of commerce.

new revolution of power which is liberating individuals at the expense of the twentieth-century nation-state.

Church attempted to suppress the printing press, most of the new volumes were published in those areas of Europe where the writ of established authority was the weakest. This may prove to be a close analogy with attempts by the U.S. government today to suppress encryption technology.

The Information Revolution will destroy the monopoly of power of the nation-state as surely as the Gunpowder Revolution destroyed the Church's monopoly.

Other things being equal, the more widely dispersed key technologies are, the more widely dispersed power will be, and the smaller the optimum scale of government.

Every social system, however strongly or weakly it clings to power, pretends that its rules will never be superseded.

When weapons or tools of production can be effectively hoarded or monopolized, they tend to centralize power.