Quotes About Authority

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

All leaders strive to turn their followers into children.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

A Federal officer called Wyndham "a big bag of wind.

If you don't learn how to practice power, someone else will do it for you—in your name, on your turf, with your voice, and often against your interests.

First, power concentrates. That is, it feeds on itself and compounds (as does powerlessness). • Second, power justifies itself. People invent stories to legitimize the power they have (or lack). • Third, power is infinite. There is no inherent limit on the amount of power people can create.

Every person and institution with power in our society today has it because we give it to them.

Rather than saying our leaders aren't leading, we can, using this distinction, say instead that the people with authority aren't exercising any leadership.

Preaching is spiritual warfare! Ephesians 3:10 tells us that when we preach, something supernatural happens.

How can you change the world? The answer: find seven women, turn them loose, and watch Satan tremble in their presence." —

Some problems cannot be cured through legislation. But they must be attended to nonetheless. And here's the problem: The less the culture attends to these things, the more the government will attend to them and the less freedom there will be.

King George III himself, it must be pointed out, stood out as a rare and notable exception to the advanced moral decay of those around him. He was deeply sensitive to his symbolic position as the head of the country and sincerely wished to set an example for the subjects he ruled.

A sight to make surrounding nations stare, A Kingdom trusted to a school boy's care.

The God of the Bible was Lord over everything, over every scientific discovery. He was Lord over not just what we did not know, but over what we knew and were discovering through science

Hitler was moving ahead with his own plans for the church. He knew quite well how to deal with these Protestant pastors. "You can do anything you want with them," he once remarked. "They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. —Martin Luther

Religion is the most fragile of all freedoms. And that's because it is the most threatening to those in power.

corporal discipline was de rigueur

Bonhoeffer's three conclusions—that the church must question the state, help the state's victims, and work against the state, if necessary—were too much for almost everyone. But for him they were inescapable. In time, he would do all three.

It was a case of the blind leading the blind, only worse, for Arnault seems to have been practically headless.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.

There was only one reality, and Christ was Lord over all of it, or none.