Quotes About Authority

La verità è figlia del tempo e non dell'autorità.

E la somma degli angoli di un triangolo non può variare a seconda degli interessi della Curia

We are only permitted to take emotional stands on issues that do not affect corporate power.

They enjoyed the passive acquiescence—and at times the direct support—of the police, the army, and the church.

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

Power changes its appearance but not its reality.

Power is linked with war, and a society wishing to limit war's ravages can find no other way than by limiting the scope of Power.

Command is a mountaintop. The air breathed there is different, and the perspectives seen there are different, from those of the valley of obedience. The passion for order and the genius for construction, which are part of man's natural endowment, get full play there. The man who has grown great sees from the top of his tower what he can make, if he so wills, of the swarming masses below him.

The modern absolutism, which we find the most natural thing in the world, would have been quite beyond the dreams of the most absolute of kings.

Rejoicing in his absolute authority, the single egoist will exploit it methodically, whereas a mêlée of egoists will bring about a ruinous disorder and a disastrous cleavage, because the contrariety of the appetites to be satisfied will prevent the satisfaction of any single one. Clearly, then, the effect of the pursuit of private ends under cover of the public good will be worse if there are many with a hand in power than if there is only one.

History is the register of the strife of authorities. Always and everywhere man takes possession of man to bend him to his will and adapt him to his designs; so that society is seen to be a galaxy of authorities which arise, grow, and fight each other.

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power.

The man who slowly walked away from them was a king in their society. A day had come when he had decided that he did not need any kingship other than the kind of wife everybody would loathe from the bottom of their hearts.

Memories haunt. So do fears that you don't know half the things you are supposed to know since your name now sits on the jackets of some books. I had come to books in autodidact fashion, with a handful of workshops tossed in. What course could I teach? What were to be the rules? From what hollow in what bone was I to extract the necessary charm, the more necessary authority? I had no mystique and no defense against my own uncertainty and yet months of indecision melted into yes.

Peace comes in situations completely surrendered to the sovereign authority of Christ.

If you are not royalty, He is not King.

Oddly, the most freeing thing we can ever do is to abdicate the throne of our own miniature kingdoms.

One nurse told me to say please when I asked her to do something. She should consider herself luck to be in one piece today.

But whatever gives power is also potentially dangerous. What can make others anxious is a potentially destructive power; and if it can harm others it might also destroy its owner.