Quotes About Authority

How potent was that word. With.

Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything

Because citizens were always a bit like inmates and inmates were always a bit like citizens, so Consilience and Positron have only made it official.

It's foolish to joke with those who have absolute control over you. They don't like it; they think you don't appreciate the full extent of their power.

How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment.

The leader had a beard and was wearing a caftan that looked as if it had been sewn by elves on hash.

My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body.

Once she wasn't supposed to like it. To have her in a position she didn't like, that was power. Even if she liked it she had to pretend she didn't. Then she was supposed to like it. To make her do something she didn't like and then make her like it, that was greater power. The greatest power of all is when she doesn't really like it but she's supposed to like it, so she has to pretend.

There were pockets within pockets, with a CorpSeCorps hand in each one of them.

Do you think anyone will believe it?" Aunt Elizabeth asked. "They will believe whatever is in the best interests of Ardua Hall," I said firmly. "Which is the same as their own best interests.

All fathers except mine are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers. But fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home the fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to them than meets the eye.

The Aunts had their methods, and their informants: no walls were solid for them, no doors locked.

You can't lead if no one will follow.

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening.

Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.

How soon before there are ancient texts they feel they have to obey but have forgotten how to interpret?

Last week they shot a woman, right about here. She was a Martha. She was fumbling in her robe, for her pass, and they thought she was hunting for a bomb. They thought she was a man in disguise. There have been such incidents. Rita and Cora knew the woman. I heard them talking about it, in the kitchen. Doing their job, said Cora. Keeping us safe.

It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution.

Who controls the women and babies has been a keystone of every repressive regime on the planet.

The doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the accountants: in the new world of Gilead, as in the old, their sins are frequently forgiven them.

It would make me feel that I have power. But such a feeling would be an illusion, and too risky.

While I read, the Commander sits and watches me doing it, without speaking but also without taking his eyes off me. This watching is a curiously sexual act, and I feel undressed while he does it.

It was true she had never specifically forbidden us to do anything - that would be too crude a violation of her law of nuance - but this only makes me feel I am actually forbidden to do everything.

It was the feet they'd do, for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After