Quotes About Authority

Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash

Rich people do this. They have the power and they see no reason not to use it. Men and women are just merchandise, like everything else. Store them, freight them, decant them. Sign at the bottom, please. On

You can't talk to people like that. Soldiers, corporate execs, politicians. All you can do is kill them, and even that rarely makes things any better. They just leave their shit behind, and someone else to carry on.

She said, I have no excuses, least of all for God. Like all tyrants, he is not worthy of the spit you would waste on negotiations. The deal we have is infinitely simpler—I don't call him to account, and he extends me the same courtesy.

Soldiers follow orders. Regardless. The moment you refuse to carry out an order, you're no longer a soldier. You're just a paid killer trying to renegotiate your contract.

That's how you fight wars, after all—with soldiers who are more afraid of stepping out of line than they are of dying on the battlefield.

When you don't like the laws, you go somewhere they can't touch you. And then you make up some of your own.

Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters.

I'd rather you didn't smoke in here.' 'Kawahara, I'd rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don't suppose you'll oblige me.

Preferiría que no fumara aquí. - Kawahara, yo en cambio preferiría que usted se muriera de una hemorragia interna, pero no creo que vaya a hacerlo.

The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here—it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin.

The essence of control is to remain hidden from view

Strange how you could become a man's god without noticing.

Comme Bancroft, MacIntyre avait été un homme de pouvoir et, comme tous les hommes de pouvoir, quand il parlait de prix, vous pouviez être sûr d'une chose : C'était quelqu'un d'autre qui payait.

The law of the land is supposed to be obeyed.

Illegitemus

Saints are merely tyrants in the kingdom of virtue.

At least pretend we have a standing date, someday, for that mother-son field trip we never got to take, thanks to Sam's draconian call sheets. He should've stayed on to run Italy itself. They'd be a superpower!

I can't believe you just did that,' Charlie marvelled. 'You've broken more college rules in five minutes than I've managed in a month.

If you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

Masters and parents used to remind us irritatingly that they too had once been young, and so could speak with authority. It's just a phase, they would insist. You'll grow out of it; life will teach you reality and realism. But back then we declined to acknowledge that they had ever been anything like us, and we knew that we grasped life--and truth, and morality, and art--far more clearly than our compromised elders.

It seemed such a brief while ago that they were all laughing at Professor Nikolayev's definition of a musicologist. Imagine we are eating scrambled eggs, the Professor used to say. My cook, Pasha, has prepared them, and you and I are eating them. Along comes a man who has not prepared them and is not eating them, but he talks about them as if he knows everything about them - that is a musicologist.

Silent or gagged women are powerless women. A powerful woman is one who can speak out to challenge existing power structures or to explore previously taboo territory.

I'd read somewhere that if you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.