Quotes About Authority

When they teach [doctors] how to suture, they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all-powerful.

Being "in control" isn't always about the desire to manipulate situations, but often it's about the need to manage perception.

The best definition of power comes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He described power as the ability to achieve our purpose and to effect change. If we question our need for power, think about this: How do you feel when you believe that you are powerless to change something in your life? Powerlessness is dangerous.

Very early in our training, we are taught that a cool distance and inaccessibility contribute to prestige, and that if you're too relatable, your credentials come into question.

The Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action, then little more than an idea in the making, needed a deputy for the director, Frank Maher. Santamaria's words—'so I said…"Yes", because I would have said yes to anything he asked'—echo down the years.7

As a young man Mannix was disgusted to see his cousin John Cagney take off his cap to Robert Sanders. 'I always do that to my superiors,' Cagney explained. 'Well, my advice to you is to go about bald-headed,' Daniel retorted.8

No is the wildest word we consign to the language

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.

I'm not a potted plant. I'm here as the lawyer. That's my job.

Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly.

No one, it seems to me, who has fully grasped the Crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering, or seemingly formidable. MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

Young Christians are sick of pablum. It doesn't work anymore. They are tired of rabbinical hair-splitting, empty liturgical apparatus, Sunday school minutiae, the ghostly voices of the old regime; they reject stuck minds and methods and by their indifference to structures and traditional authorities

We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

The question had become not "What does Jesus say?" but "What does the Church say?" This question is still being asked today. Sad but true: Some Christians want to be slaves. It is easier to let others make decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law.

Jesus broke the law of tradition when the love of persons demanded it.

It was wise to put bureaucrats in windowless offices.

Who killed this man [Patrick Sonnier]? Nobody. Everybody can argue that he or she was just doing a job - the governor, the warden, the head of the Department of Corrections, the district attorney, the judge, the jury, the Pardon Board, the witnesses to the execution. Nobody feels personally responsible for the death of this man. (p. 101)

With my pen I will rule the world. You'll see, they'll call me the scourge of princes.

Big changes don't happen at the battlefield; they are made in closed rooms where very powerful people decide in which direction things should go.

That would never have worked. You can't be a hired hand for your own father. Especially when he makes all the decisions, and is always right.

There was always somebody at the top who dictated the terms, specifically or by implication, that those below had to accept. - Kurt Wallander

I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. This grief is so deep not just because the human sin is so great, but also—and more so—because the divine love is so boundless. To become like the Father whose only authority is compassion, I have to shed countless tears and so prepare my heart to receive anyone, whatever their journey has been, and forgive them from that heart.