Quotes About Authority

as with any leader, it would be a mistake for him to show weakness or exhibit doubts …

headquarters-bureaucrat vice presidents who are nonproducing but positioned to take the blame for those above them if anything goes wrong;

If power truly comes from the barrel of a gun, to borrow a phrase from a later master of the dual state, Mao Zedong, Lenin still had his finger on the trigger, especially in the capital. His best bet, however, was to defuse the authority of the Constituent Assembly before it even met.

Lenin did not care either way. Their time would come later; for now, his message had been broadcast loud and clear. No one, absolutely no one, would be allowed to stand in the way

never in history, past or present, had an autocratic regime handed over power with so little upheaval or bloodshed.

Wilson was raising America up as the new global colossus based on its moral authority as a universal nation.

When the chairman of the Democratic National Committee came to see him after the election to ask for some political favors, and reminded Wilson that he owed his election to that party and its leadership committee, Wilson coldly cut him down to size. "Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States," he told the astonished chairman. "Neither you nor any other mortal could have chosen another president."30

Men are guided instead by custom, and the personal authority

In the absence of any force to maintain law and order, power belonged to whoever was strong enough to seize it.

Ever since the emperor Constantine had invested dominion over the Church in the bishop of Rome,‡ successive popes had borrowed his Neoplatonist vocabulary of imperial authority to describe their own. The Catholic Church saw itself as a Platonic copy of the true Universal Church, the Body of Christ. And just as the Body of Christ has only one head, went the argument, so also must Christian society. God

Knox and Buchanan believed that political power was ordained by God, but that that power was vested not in kings or in nobles or even in the clergy, but in the people.

Rather, it was more beneficial, and ultimately more rational, than ones put together by politicians or rulers, who are themselves creatures of their own passions and whims.

By 1400, the authority of Aristotle closed virtually every argument. Once a student learned his view on a subject, whether it was a fine point in logic or the number of planets or the functions of body organs, there was no point in going any further. Someone wanting to know how many udders a cow had would be pointed to the relevant passage in Aristotle instead of being sent out to a field to count for himself.

these were quiet unassuming men and women. They went to work in their shops and counting houses, raised their children to be good Catholics, and gave generously to their local parish. If some made fortunes, they never dreamed of rising above their station or challenging existing authority. All they asked was to be left alone to pray and read their devotional tracts and follow the orthodoxies of the Church.

But in the short term, it exposed the shortcomings of those who had relied on him as the ultimate authority on everything, especially in universities. Reformation scholars not only had more books, but had their time freed up to ponder, to cross-reference, and to set texts side by side.

The man who discovered the power behind that authority was not Gutenberg or Caxton or even Luther. It was Erasmus of Rotterdam.

This world offers a form of liberty—the freedom to pursue one's own self-interest—and a form of authority: the power of the magistrate "to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent [long-term] interests.

translation of the New Testament in 1516. By exposing many of the errors of the old Latin Vulgate, Erasmus established a new appreciation for "pure Scripture" as the final authority on all things spiritual as well as many secular.

deflect any political challenge to established privilege and authority. The general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience" through a degraded mass culture, manipulative political elections (or "manufactured consent"), and a mind-numbing, conformist system of thought control via the mass media.4

We establish government precisely to put a check on other people's avidity for our personal goods. Where property is, laws and government follow, not out of keen desire for them, but out of necessity.

Politics in modern society, then, must involve a tension between two conflicting, but complementary principles: liberty, which preserves individuals, and authority, which preserves society.

Dictatorship is the power relying upon force unbound by any laws.

It may seem incredible that a single idea could have such a devastating impact. However, it appeared to have the unimpeachable authority of both Plato and Aristotle behind it—and the Romans were great believers in authority. In addition, Polybius had hit upon the Romans' one fatal weakness: their fascination with politics.

Freedom, in short, must eventually lead to unfreedom. If this was true, Europeans asked, then why not start with unfreedom and be done with it? The solution seemed to be ceding all authority to a single absolute sovereign, who consciously modeled his power and glory after the ancient Roman emperors and their Neoplatonist propagandists.