Quotes About Authority

In fact you have been as if your arms were tied, without knowing what to do. It appears that you are no better than a wooden image." —The Emperor telling Lin Zexu why he was firing him

Aber sie tun es doch, sie sprechen von der Ohnmacht und praktizieren Macht, sie bekennen Demut und demütigen andere!

Li wondered whether she should give the White House a call. Not that there was anything to report, but the President liked talking to her - he admired her intellect. That was the way things stood between them, and Li knew it, but she kept it to herself. It was better that way. She was one of only a handful of female American generals

that held no tradition too sacred to question. Jesus was the first of the Enlightenment philosophers. In John 8: 4-7 speaking like some sort of first century Voltaire, Jesus questioned the laws and traditions of his day. "And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and

And as we shall see, the direct power the human mind has over its own body, mightier spirits have over all matter.

The pulpit elevates the clergy to a position of prominence. True to its meaning, it puts the preacher at center "stage"—separating and placing him high above God's people.

they raise hell 'cause nobody raised them

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.

Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.

There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.

The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.

An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.

Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Great power involves great responsibility

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

Our English monarchs are so unimaginative," said Eldric. "They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.

Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree.

They were generally run by young men who mocked authority and preached egalitarianism yet had no qualms about ordering everyone else around and stealing their comrades' girlfriends.

This is more like the scientists I know. Authority outweighs evidence, at least for as long as the authority lives.

Yet at the same time humans are inherently irreverent. It was Saint Bonaventura, a thirteenth-century theologian, who said, "The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind." We love to make fun of the higher-ups. We're always ready to bring them down. And the powerful know this all too well. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," as Shakespeare wrote.

With a bully for a leader, the group seems to wait for a challenger and eagerly support him if he stands a chance.