Quotes About Authority

It was the pride and ostentation of power the Jesus rebuked in spiritual leaders.

Preacher: "This is the word of God!" Constantine: "The edited word of God

Criminal: You can suck my dick, motherfucker! Detective Bridges: You suck mine! [shoves barrel of pistol in the Criminal's mouth] An' you get used to it, cause you get to Rykers you're gonna find a lot of dick on the goddamn menu! Now grunt twice for yes! You through bitchin'?

My parents are going to kill me!" "That seems rather harsh...

As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?" "Yum," said Mogget. "Yes, sir!" mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.

I realized, then, that being an adult was just about bullshitting everyone around you. Just do things until someone stops you from doing those things, and then say, "Oh, that isn't allowed?

He never understood when she said that if she went to a doctor, the doctor would only invent a disease that would explain why he couldn't help her.

over open country you could send a spastic out of a plane with a beach umbrella and the Government couldn't care less.

I'm a librarian," he said. "I always know what I'm talking about.

I'm a librarian. I always know what I'm talking about

There is no Art made without power, and there is no reason for Art to be made except for power.

Mr Powell raised an eyebrow. 'I'm a librarian' he said. 'I always know what I'm talking about.

Obedience is required conformity. Responsibility is voluntary conformity. Obedience is submission to a person. Responsibility is submission to a principle.

With every crisis, authority moves to the center, and stays there. And as bureaucracy grows stronger, those who might resist it grow weaker.

The word bureaucratie was coined in the early eighteenth century by Jean-Claude Marie Vincent, a French government minister. Translated as "the rule of desks," the label was not intended as a compliment. Vincent viewed France's vast administrative apparatus as a threat to the spirit of enterprise. (Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.) A century later, in 1837, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill described bureaucracy as a vast tyrannical network.

The fault lies not with any particular manager, but with a management regime that empowers the few at the expense of the many, that prizes conformance over originality, that wedges human beings into narrow roles, robs them of agency, and treats them as mere resources.

It's easy to believe that large-scale human action is impossible without a top-down power structure. Unity of command ensures clarity of direction. Clear lines of authority minimize ambiguity. Tiered decision rights align power and competence. Absent formal hierarchy, there's anarchy, right? Well, maybe not.

the single greatest threat to organizational resilience: the unwillingness or inability of senior leaders to write off their own depreciating intellectual capital. This failing would be less dangerous if subordinates felt empowered to challenge C-suite dogma, but most middle managers are disinclined to bite the hand that feeds them. Thus myopia, like authority, trickles down.

Politics is about the control of a limited number of resources by a limited number of people who think that number is too many

A guy like Tracy could probably get elected chief of police on the basis of his dashing reflection in the fun-house mirror. In the comic business they call that the power of make believe. In our nation's capital, they call it politics.

The ability to control oneself to determine one's actions is a pretty powerful idea. Base it on training and it's called discipline. But do it because you simply can, that's raw power. The power of will.

Abbesses then for several centuries were recognized as the ordinary ministers of penance for their own monastic community and sometimes even exercised that power outside that circle. This was one of the most important liturgical functions

True charisma will come from taking charge of each situation by saying "I'm responsible", but then not seeking any praise or approval afterwards.

A state that claims to be a savior of mankind necessarily becomes the final judge of mankind.