Quotes About Authority

You have not a perception of the first elements in this matter till you know that government by a CLUB is a standing wonder.

But a government by discussion, if it can be borne, at once breaks down the yoke of fixed custom.

Religion is the best weapon to rule or use a nation if you know how to use it.

I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematized.

All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.

A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction.

Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralization; they are: contempt for the masses and the over-estimation of one's own merits.

The State, for its own preservation, must necessarily be powerful as regards foreign affairs; but if it is so as regards foreign affairs, it will infallibly be so as regards home affairs.

Those kids aren't dumb. But the people who run these schools want to make sure they don't get smart: they are really teaching the kids to be slaves.

It seems at first sight strange that any man of genius should have patiently submitted to rules which, from the point of view of art, were perfectly arbitrary.

Police violence, I noted, was directly proportional to police boredom, and not to any resistance offered by protestors.

Remember, the police are neutral -- they hate everybody.

Human beings today ... are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate.

The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

La femme mariée est une esclave qu'il faut savoir mettre sur un trône.

Vinet gave his wife the terrible, fixed, cold look with which men enforce their absolute dominion. The hapless helot, punished incessantly for not having the one thing that was wanted of her, a fortune, took up her cards.

The good man signed the papers with the innocence of a child who does what his mother orders without question.

God makes no mistake in His judgments, Madame; I recognize no tribunal but His.

The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a throne.

The heavy curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing to be done and the right man to do it.

One time my mom tried to ground me, but that lasted 15 minutes.

A guilty system recognizes no innocents.