Quotes About Authority

In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone.

Anyone who thinks sports are ruled by athletes need only think of American sports' most enduring tradition: Immediately after a championship, as the champagne sprays and the confetti falls, the trophy is passed not to the team captain but most often to the team owner, handed to him by his highest-ranking employee, the league commissioner.

Don't go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you'll land in trouble too big for you.

You become a leader in times of trouble. Leaders emerge when things don't go well. When everyone else starts pointing fingers, a leader takes responsibility.

I developed a resistance to authority. Not to discipline - I learned that. But to authority. I like to think for myself. And I like to cause trouble.

We shouldn't just consider the desire of government to do what it wants to do. We should always consider the resistance of people. The culture of Iranian people doesn't let the government drag people into deep trouble or backlash. Maybe government wants it, but the culture doesn't let it go on.

When I get into trouble at school I'd like to take an invisibility cloak, drape it over me and sneak out the door. Or I'd like to have a 3 headed-dog because then no one would argue with me.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

My parents made it clear that I should never display even the slightest disrespect to individuals who had the power to let me skip a half grade or move into more challenging classes. While it was all right for me to know more about a topic than my sixth-grade teacher had ever learned, questioning her facts could only lead to trouble.

I've always had trouble with male authority figures because my father was such a martinet.

Never feel that a piece of criticism or advice is too much trouble to give, or that it exceeds your province.

I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I'm not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It's an organization of men - it's not about faith.

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order.

I've never been in trouble with the police.

It was always inevitable that if you get serious trouble in any family then everybody's inclined to look at the head of that family and see if they see any cause or reason to associate it with the head of the, head of the family, why it should be.

Oddly, I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of someone who has a troubled relationship with their father. And yet, I never had a problem with my father.

Besides interrupting more serious criminal activity, intensive misdemeanor enforcement and proactive street stops send the message to criminals and law-abiding residents alike that the rule of law is still in effect in troubled neighborhoods and that the police are watching.

The London police have discovered that the best way to neuter demonstrations is not to move everyone on, or disperse troublemakers, but hold them close, cordon them into a diminishing space for hours and hours, as a sort of arbitrary al fresco arrest.

We still are pestered by two parties: the aristocratic, which is panting for a counter revolution, and the factious, which aims at the division of the empire and destruction of the authority - and perhaps of the lives - of the reigning branch, both of which parties are fomenting troubles.

I left the school sixth form after the first day because they wouldn't let me wear jeans and I couldn't go home and ask for money for trousers.

I was so scared of my father. He'd pull up in his truck and start looking for something I'd done wrong. There was no escape, no excuse, no way out of nothing.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

Self-control is true power.