Quotes About Authority

Jesus came for us, but that doesn't mean he came to please us. Jesus came for us, but he does not answer to us. Jesus came for us, but he will not subject himself to our agenda . . .

Ethos can amplify the preacher's message, but it cannot serve as a substitute for the authority of the biblical text. Good ethos is not a guarantee of good results. Godly preachers like Jeremiah are sometimes ignored, while surly and self-centered preachers like Jonah may be heeded beyond all expectation.

Christian religion defines morality by a belief system based on a master-slave relationship, and rooted in resentment of the raw beauty and power of the life force.

They drum that into you: discipline trumps courage. In a fight, the people who win are the ones who do what they're told. It's not like it is in films. Don't be brave, just do what you're told.

The white policeman was a man who gave an impression of heaviness. It wasn't that he was fat, but he sagged as if with a moral or psychic burden; his shoulders sagged, his eyes sagged, his suit sagged and he sat sagged in his chair, as if his disappointments with the world were bearing down on him. He made it clear that Shahid was one of these disappointments.

Really, when you get to know him Ike's OK. I mean not grouchy or anything and not too bright. I mean OK for a general – you wouldn't want him to be President or anything like that.

He looked back at Troy – a bold, challenging eye-to-eye stare that Troy had often wished he possessed himself. If he could look like that he'd be the hard man of the Yard in no time.

The Americans will see you. God knows why, but they will.' 'You have a way of making it sound as though they're above the law,' said Troy. 'What you don't grasp, Troy, is that they run things now.

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

teacher's class in his all-boys' high school

the abandonment of a belief in objective values can cause, at least temporarily, a decay of subjective concern and sense of purpose. That it does so is evidence that the people in whom this reaction occurs have been tending to objectify their concerns and purposes, have been giving them a fictitious external authority. A claim to objectivity has been so strongly associated with their subjective concerns and purposes that the collapse of the former seems to undermine the latter as well.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

Government has no other end than the preservation of property.

Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.

No peace and security among mankind—let alone common friendship—can ever exist as long as people think that governments get their authority from God and that religion is to be propagated by force of arms.

The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit everyone his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political or civil society. [....] Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men [e.g., Hobbes] is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all.

The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.

Methinks Sir Robert should have carried his Monarchical Power one step higher and satisfied the World, that Princes might eat their Subjects too.

To avoid this state of war (wherein there is no appeal but to heaven, and wherein every the least difference is apt to end, where there is no authority to decide between the contenders) is one great reason of men's putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature: for where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power.

Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.

A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.

making laws with penalties of death, and consequently