Quotes About Authority

Priests have never been great men for the truth

How many's that?" I asked the shepherd. "Jiggit and mumph, lord," he said. "Is that enough?" "It's enough, lord." "Kill the rest then," I said. "Jiggit and mumph?" Willibald asked, still shivering. "Twenty and five," I said. "Yain, tain, tether, mether, mumph. It's how shepherds count. I don't know why. The world is full of mystery.

You don't buy a dog and bark yourself

The law says I own that land, and the law, we are told, is what makes us men under God instead of beasts in the ditch.

You told these bastards they had till New Year's Day?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Then break your word, Major. Go and kill them at Christmas instead.' 'Yes, sir.

Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they're putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

He liked to see men cowed and frightened, for that made them biddable, and Sergeant Hakeswill was always at his happiest when he was in control of unhappy men.

ignored Truslow, trusting instead in the Colonel's largesse.

Or was it a question of how the laws were actually interpreted and enforced at the time they committed their crimes, and that they were not applied to them? What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

As soon as we abandon our reason and are content to rely on authority, there is no end to our troubles.

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

Even if all the experts agree, they may well be mistaken.

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

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

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

A victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

The problem of finding a collection of "wise" men and leaving the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy.

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.

It is necessary for the average citizen, if he wishes to make a living, to avoid incurring the hostility of certain big men. And these big men have an outlook - religious, moral, and political - with which they expect their employees to agree, at least outwardly.