Quotes About Authority

The wrong sort of people are always in power because they would not be in power if they were not the wrong sort of people.

When man's law disappears or loses its force, nature's law returns—quickly.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. Here

The more you learn about the law, the more you realize there is no such thing as 'the law'.

Nor was anyone empowered to both enforce Hillary's will and tell her when she was wrong without fear of reprisal.

There was no room in his kingdom for the princes of the defunct super PAC. Once he'd extracted the group's lists, which he thought had limited value, they were done.

camps could exert control over their delegates during

What kind of person actually sits down and decides that no one should be allowed to end a sentence with a preposition? Not even decide what ideas you should or shouldn't talk about, but to actually make rules about what order to put your words in... It's such an amazing kind of petty tyranny.

In what appears to have been an unplanned quip, Wilberforce asked Huxley if he thought he was descended from an ape on his father's or mother's side. Huxley retorted that he would rather have simian relatives than claim kinship with a man who used his charisma and authority to quash free debate.

Louis Pasteur once noted, "The microbes always have the last word.

A people are not made for rulers, but rulers for a people.

One great law for all who would be truly led by God's Pillar of cloud and fire, is to take no step at the bidding of self-will or without the clear moving of the heavenly Guide. Though the direction be new and the way seem beset with difficulty, there is never any risk, provided we are only led of God. Each new advance needs separate and special authority from Him, and yesterday's guidance is not sufficient for to-day.

Our obligation to love, honor and obey any being is in proportion to his loveliness, honor and authority. Therefore, sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations must be a crime infinitely heinous and so deserving infinite punishment. If there is any evil in sin against God it is infinite evil.

Almost all the prosperity of a public society and civil community does, under God, depend on their rulers. They are like the main springs or wheels in a machine that keep every part in their due motion, and are in the body politic, as in the vitals in the body natural, and as the pillars and the foundation in a building.

one irrepressible folk hero hailed as our favorite defender of the truth and resister of authority," Budd Schulberg

Those who actually dropped the bombs were less responsible than the people who took the decisions higher up the chain of command. In modern technological war, psychological responses are poorly correlated with degrees of responsibility. In people further back up the chain, this casual distance reduces the psychological resistance they have to overcome.

Focusing on effective leadership without focusing on a willingness to follow is like studying clapping by studying only the left hand.

authorities often exploit their subordinates for their own benefit while believing they are perfectly just.

When I speak to liberal audiences about the three "binding" foundations—Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity—I find that many in the audience don't just fail to resonate; they actively reject these concerns as immoral. Loyalty to a group shrinks the moral circle; it is the basis of racism and exclusion, they say. Authority is oppression.

Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism.

sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America1

A Liberal authority is someone or something that earns society's respect through making things happen that unify society and suppress its enemy.

If you've ever felt a flash of distaste when a salesperson called you by first name without being invited to do so, or if you felt a pang of awkwardness when an older person you have long revered asked you to call him by first name, then you have experienced the activation of some of the modules that comprise the Authority/subversion foundation.

When people within a hierarchical order act in ways that negate or subvert that order, we feel it instantly, even if we ourselves have not been directly harmed. If authority is in part about protecting order and fending off chaos, then everyone has a stake in supporting the existing order and in holding people accountable for fulfilling the obligations of their station.35