Quotes About Authority

Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges.

it would have been a rare thing anyhow for an official to come upon an idea that is not provided for in the regulations.

The prison was very important - as everywhere on earth. Everywhere the building of a prison is the first step in the organization of a civilized state.

don't ever believe that kings were done with when the fathers of the country made a revolution.

Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!

justice and the birch.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way-- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

Nowadays, everybody fancies himself an expert in government and wants to have a say.

Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It's not the will of the people, remember; it's the will of the majority.

But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn't freedom. It's not control that's lacking when one feels 'free', but the objectionable control of force.

Lord Acton's famous dictum "All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority.

For the tendency of all "governments" is to infringe the standards of decency and truth; this is inherent in their nature and hardly avoidable in their practice.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: "El Conocimiento es Poder" (Francis Bacon)

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.

Seek to make thy course regular, that men may know beforehand, what they may expect; but be not too positive and peremptory; and express thyself well, when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve the right of thy place; but stir not questions of jurisdiction; and rather assume thy right, in silence and de facto, than voice it with claims, and challenges. Preserve likewise the rights of inferior places; and think it more honor, to direct in chief, than to be busy in all.

For as in the government of states it is sometimes necessary to bridle one faction with another, so it is in the government within.

As yet the few rule by their hold, not over the reason of the multitude, but over their imaginations, and their habits; over their fancies as to distant things they do not know at all, over their customs as to near things which they know very well.

A despot must feel that he is the pivot of the State. The stress of his kingdom is upon him. As he is, so are his affairs.

At an election the non-titled are much more powerful than the titled.

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people. In proportion as you give it power it will inquire into everything, settle everything, meddle in everything.

The worst judge, they say, is a deaf judge; the most dull Government is a free Government on matters its ruling classes will not hear.

The terrible difficulty of early life—the use of pastors and masters—really is, that they compel boys to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to learn.

Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.