Quotes About Authority

among their number was the chief official, the high priest.

in fact it is very difficult to find any instance in which he actually did what the law forbade. What he violated was the understanding and interpretation of the law by other Jewish leaders of his day, especially the Pharisees, who had developed complex rules to be adopted in order to be sure the law was kept.

which is a common term for the Lord God but is also a term that could be used, for example, by a slave for his master.

the ones claiming to be in the know became the object of scorn and derision.

either indistinguishable from God as his visible manifestation" or he is a distinct figure, separate from God, who is bestowed with God's own authority.

For the only reason (I came to think) for God to inspire the Bible would be so that his people would have his actual words; but if he really wanted people to have his actual words, surely he would have miraculously preserved those words, just as he had miraculously inspired them in the first place. Given the circumstances that he didn't preserve the words, the conclusion seemed inescapable to me that he hadn't gone to the trouble of inspiring them.

If God wanted us to have his words, why didn't he preserve his words?

a child has been born for us,                  A son given to us;            Authority rests upon his shoulders;                  And he is named            Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God

is perhaps best to think of the Senate recognizing a divine figure who had been in their midst rather than making someone divine.

Your voice could peel scales off a donkey's butt.

Law enforcement: a case of good men doing bad chores.

Although they had been honed like hawks toward the guns since early childhood, Cuthbert and Alain still carried an erroneous belief common to many boys their age: that their elders were also their betters, at least in such matters as planning and wit; they actually believed that grownups knew what they were doing.

Most politicians lie for the same reason a monkey swings by his tail, which is to say because he can.

He had no psychic powers, but there was one power he did have: he was the grownup. The adult.

I was just following orders. The people elected me. But who elected the people?

General Federico Tinoco

Diem complained about "all these soldiers I never asked to come here.

With his manifold instruments of personal power, he was mercilessly hounding all those who expressed differences of opinion with him, but he was always the victim.

For some, including Nicholas II, the mere existence of a prime minister was an affront to autocracy.63

The talk around the congress was that "Moses had taken the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin took them out of the Central Committee."305

From the point of view of the benefits to the revolution, [we decided] to allow voting only by those who are the genuine party guard.

Even Stalin's absolute power did not delight him absolutely. He exulted in it, yet it roused his self-pity.

For centuries the people in Russia were under a tsar. The Russian people are tsarist. For many centuries the Russian people, especially the Russian peasants, have been accustomed to one person being at the head. And now there should be one.'"366

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.