Quotes About Authority

There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything.

My faith in the people governing us,' he had said, 'is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed, is, on the whole, illimitable.

Intelligent Design'] is a theology for control freaks.

Academics and scientists too easily enjoy the role of secular priesthood given them in the nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley in particular.

We live in a society controlled by a few, their decisions determine our futures. We live for them, but never see them, for they are not of this earth"     Simon Lewis 2015

While the cat's away, you may find the rats getting damned uppity.

Worship Me Like the Goddess I Am or There Will Be Some Serious Smiting." Jubilee

I'm exempt from anything I damned will feel like on the grounds that I'll kick anyone's ass who says otherwise.

Would you really have...?" said Julien. "Almost certainly," I said. "I have deep-seated problems with authority figures." "But you are one!" "I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour.

I've never been good at puzzles. When you wear a suit of armour that can punch holes through the world, mostly you don't have to be. Other people will normally fall all over themselves to tell you everything you need to know. The Somnambulist started to snore quietly. Walker

Oh come on!" I said. "If Walker couldn't control me with his Voice, did you really think you stood any chance? I've been around. I've stepped on worse things than you! I've faced angels, from Above and Below! I don't bow down to anyone! I'm John Taylor!

The gargoyles were always the first to make it clear when you were out of favour with the paper, and some of them had uncanny aim and absolutely no inhibitions when it came to bodily functions.

Best thing about being King; you get lots of pressies.

I'd prefer to be admired and respected, but I'll settle for everyone else being shit-scared of us, if that means we can get the job done. Decisions

Very few politicians, who have chosen a political career, can fulfill the aspirations and survive the strains of an elevated office that in a monarchy was filled so randomly. Each tsar had to be simultaneously dictator and supreme general, high priest and Little Father. They required all the qualities listed by the sociologist Max Weber: the personal gift of grace, the virtue of legality, and "the authority of the eternal yesterday.

He asked, 'How can you make a revolution without firing-squads?

Commissar for Justice?' Isaak Shteinberg, a Left-SR, challenged Lenin. 'Let's honestly call it the Commissariat of Social Annihilation!' 'Well said!' replied Lenin. 'That's exactly how it's going to be!

When Polina Molotova, mistress of the perfume industry, boasted to Stalin that she was wearing her latest product, Red Moscow, Stalin sniffed: 'That's why you smell so nice,' he said.

The tsar was so sacred that no one was allowed to look him in the eye, and he was greeted by his subjects with total prostration. If he was bled by doctors, the blood was blessed and buried in a special blood pit to prevent sorcery.

twenties, served as his judge in 1937 and even denounced a

An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency.

Am I a Jew? [ . . . ] Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?

An end to timidity - the replacement of the philologically tentative by the lexicographically decisive." - on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary

academics more than anyone else are (with help from priests) some of the greatest villains.