Quotes About Authority

Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.

When you manage people, you must first convince them they need managing. So you create the problems and then let the people cry for solutions.

Mass beliefs in the power of outside authorities are firmly entrenched in your psyche; they are strong and old, and somewhat like a redwood forest they too can be felled very, very quickly, raising many questions about the truth of who you are and why you place your trust outside yourself.

She remembered the wanted posters for Joanne Little, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur. She blushed at putting herself in such important company, then wondered if the sheriff's office appreciated the distinction.

Blanche stared at Emmeline's door for a few moments, bristling with the desire to knock and trying to conquer her natural inclination to defy the voice of authority. It was one of the reasons she had not lasted in the waitressing, telephone sales, clerking, and typing jobs she'd tried over the years.

chastised when they have misbehaved, and taught the difference between right and wrong. Now, where is my dressing gown?

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Knowledge has always flowed upwards, to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves. The principle remains the same in the present era . . . governments dare to aspire, through their intelligence agencies, to a god-like knowledge of every one of us. —Julian Assange

Power was like a magnet, keeping everything rigid and straight and proper. But without the magnet, it all collapsed into disorganized scrap.

He laughed at that, which was good. I needed him to understand who was in charge, but didn't want to beat him down too hard. His goodwill, his naïve sense of fairness, was a potential asset, and not something to toss away needlessly.

Caligula ne demiÅŸti? Oderint dum meduant. Bizden korktuklar? sürece, b?rak?n bizden nefret etsinler.

You have to remember, the history the powers-that-be feed you always excludes what they managed to bury. Or whom.

there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. There are only smart people, and stupid ones; puppets, and puppet masters

He actually seemed to want an answer, so I shrugged and said, "A superior who inherited the job from an uncle rams a barge pole up his ass.

Ultimately, all executions are political. Their exercise is arbitrary, often capricious, and irrevocable.

bring our own worlds to bear in foreign landscapes in order to clarify them for ourselves. It is hard to imagine that we could do otherwise. The risk we take is of finding our final authority in the metaphors rather than in the land. To inquire into the intricacies of a distant landscape, then, is to provoke thoughts about one's own interior landscape, and the familiar landscapes of memory. The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves.

Going to the doctor—at least this doctor—was like going to the hairdresser. The client (patient) has to let the professional know what she wants out of each visit. The patient is in charge.

Useful thing a warrant. Murder and theft change their names if you have one.

If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture?

Christian followers of Jesus who knew about Apollonius maintained that he was a charlatan and a fraud; in response, the pagan followers of Apollonius asserted that Jesus was the charlatan and fraud. Both groups could point to the authoritative written accounts of their leader's life to score their debating points.

For people in power to think that mutual self-destruction has been foreordained in holy writ is not, obviously, a comforting thought.

And the side that knew how to utilize power was the side that won.

The books we call the New Testament were not gathered together into one canon and considered scripture, finally and ultimately, until hundreds of years after the books themselves had first been produced.

The decisions about which books should finally be considered canonical were not automatic or problem-free; the debates were long and drawn out, and sometimes harsh.