Quotes About Authority

I wonder what's the difference between ordinary councillors and privy councillors? wondered the merchant aloud. The assassin scowled at him. I think, he said, it is because you're expected to eat shit.

So he said to young Sam: if you lose your cow you should report this to the Watch under Demonic & Farmyard Animals (Lost) Act of 1804. They will swing into action with keenness and speed. Your cow will be found. If it has been impersonating other animals, it may be arrested. If you are a stupid person, do not look for your cow yourself. Never try to milk a chicken. It hardly ever works.

It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was "policeman." If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.

Sometimes Carrot sounded like a civics essay written by a stunned choirboy.

There's the basic unwritten rule of witchcraft, which is "Don't do what you will, do what I say.

She'd never really liked the book. It seemed to her that it tried to tell her what to do and what to think. Don't stray from the path, don't open that door, but hate the wicked witch because she is wicked. Oh, and believe that shoe size is a good way of choosing a wife.

It's All Officers, sir. They broke into a run. You always did for an All Officers. The people in trouble might well be you.

Where there are policemen there's crime, sergeant, remember that.

Pray you never face a good man, Vimes thought. He'll kill you with hardly a word.

if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

Ave! Duci novo, similis duci seneci",' murmured Mr Slant, drily as only a zombie can manage. 'Or, as we used to say at school, "Ave! Bossa nova, similis bossa seneca!"' He gave a little schoolmasterly laugh. He felt at home with dead languages. 'Of course, grammatically that is completely—' 'And that means . . . ?' said Madam. 'Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss,' muttered Dr Follett.

It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone's mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.

Nevertheless, to question authority is not, in principle, to attack it, although authority always assumes that this is the case since authority must repeatedly establish its right to rule; and if this is done by force, then it turns out that it was a tyranny all along. Good heavens, I can't believe I am preaching this to an audience of Irishmen! Just think about it: a quarter of an hour of rational thinking and an Englishman turns into an Irishman.

You're- you're not going to force me to go back are you? he said. Um? said the duke. He waved his hand irritably. No, no, he said. Not at all. Just call in at the torturer on your way out. See when he can fit you in.

The poor devils. They thought a king would make them free.

It is amazing what people will obey, if a clear and confident voice is used

It was a Magnum .32, CIA issue, gray, mean, heavy, capable of blowing a man away at thirty paces, and leaving nothing more than a red mist, a ghastly mess, and a certain amount of paperwork.

That's sarcasm! You can't talk to me like that! You're just a servant! That's right. And so are you.

He believed in rational thinking and scientific inquiry, which was why he never won an argument with his mother, who believed in people doing what she told them, and believed it with a rock-hard certainty which dismissed all opposition.

Oh, don't be absurd, man.' The Prime Minister sat back in his chair. 'Come on. We can't just ban a thing because we can't control it.' The minister responsible for health and safety looked startled. 'I don't see why not. It's never stopped us before.

Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants—the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare from becoming a mere lower-class brawl.

The sin I have committed is the sin of adoption. I have adopted a different set of beliefs from the beliefs I was raised to obey. But this definition of sin over time has become my joy. I do have other gods before me, many, and none are a white elderly man sitting on a gilded throne in heaven. Pronghorn antelope holds authority for me, like a priest.

Today majesty is the length from where I stand to the summit of the mountain we are climbing. This mountain has majesty and hold its own authority above all others.

When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us. We've been raised to question what we know, to discount and discredit the authority of our gut. I want to know why. I regret whenever I abandon myself. But harboring regrets is making love to the past, and there is no movement here... I am growing beyond my own conditioning, breaking set with what was breaking me.