Quotes About Authority

The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus , who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus , ' If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils .' Said [author:Diogenes|3213618, 'Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.

Attacks on me are, quite frankly, attacks on science.

He did his best to conceal this antipathy, because the one thing he hated, more than constituted authority itself, was to hear constituted authority questioned by anyone but himself. This is perhaps an endemic trait in all who love power, and my father had an absolute passion for power, although he was never in a position to wield it on a notable scale.

I was far from understanding that the capacity of men interested in power is not necessarily expressed in the brilliance of their conversation.

A company commander,' said Dicky Umfraville, when we met later that year, 'needs the qualifications of a ringmaster in a first-class circus, and a nanny in a large family.

There was something decidedly unpleasant about him, sinister, at the same time absurd, that combination of the ludicrous and alarming soon to be widely experienced by contact with those set in authority in wartime.

Money is a good servant but a bad master. —SIR FRANCIS BACON

the literal definition of the word "power" is "the ability to act.

Nothing has any power over me other than that which I give it through my conscious thoughts.

The point is: control is often more of an illusion than a reality.

Los que asumen la responsabilidad ejercen el poder; los que la eluden son desposeídos.

Far from starting with the premise that the authorities tell the truth, a depressingly large number of people now accept as a given that the government constantly lies. If it does not actively lie, many are persuaded, it conceals the truth.

Miss Proudie was not quite so civil. Had Mr. Robarts been still unmarried, she also could have smiled sweetly; but she had been exercising smiles on clergymen too long to waste them now on a married parish parson.

The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion

The bishop did not whistle. We believe that they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop; but he looked as though he would have done so, but for his apron.

Shall a man have nothing of his own; -- no sorrow in his heart, no care in his family, no thought in his breast so private and special to him, but that, if he happen to be a clergyman, the bishop may touch it with his thumb?' I am not the bishop's thumb,' said Mr. Thumble

When such men as Laurence Fitzgibbon were called upon to act as governors, was it not to be expected that the ignorant but still intelligent Bunces of the population should— "d––––n it all"?

If a husband be not master of his wife´s heart, he has no right to her fealty; if a wife ceases to love, she may cease to be true.

Mrs Grantly after her father's death. This matter, therefore, had been taken out of the warden's hands

No doubt arrogance will produce submission; and there are men who take other men at the price those other men put upon themselves.

A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents, and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as strongly as Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully answer, when attacked by The Jupiter. In such matters it is omnipotent. What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that The Jupiter is in England. Answer such an article! No, warden; whatever you do, don't do that.

There had been with him such periods of misery, during which he had wailed inwardly and had confessed to himself that the wife of his bosom was too much for him. Now the storm seemed to be coming very roughly. It would be demanded of him that he should exercise certain episcopal authority which he knew did not belong to him. Now, episcopal authority admits of being stretched or contracted according to the character of the bishop who uses it.

Dr Grantly would be ready enough to take up his cudgel against all comers on behalf of the church militant, but he would do so on the distasteful ground of the church's infallibility. Such a contest would give no comfort to Mr Harding's doubts. He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.

It is said by many who have had to deal with boys, that certain among them claim and obtain ascendancy by the spirit within them; but I doubt whether the ascendancy is not rather thrust on them than claimed by them. Here again I think the outward gait of the boy goes far towards obtaining for him the submission of his fellows.