Quotes About Authority

We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve.

People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.

Many feel that in today's climate some of those in authority are exercising, in effect, a self-serving, 'ends justify the means' mindset as well, and that, in turn, empowers them to do the same.

Your government is no longer mine.

I'm not for laws. We need a minimum of laws.

I think that most manufacturing and mining should be under the purview of state authorities.

Not only someone with epaulets can be defense minister. We're in a democratic country.

I am not the governor, administrator or chief minister, who can issue instructions to bring about changes. I can only advise.

Running a government as chief minister and managing affairs of the nation are different things.

I have always ensured that law and order was maintained during my tenures as Chief Minister of the state.

Not only generals can be politicians, and not only generals can be defense ministers.

In the end, the Foreign Ministry had no power at all to do anything.

The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.

In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment; where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.

Diktatoren und Despoten sind bekanntlich prädestiniert dafür, poetischem Raunen anheimzufallen

Proteste herauszufordern ist meistens Taktik, Proteste niederzuschießen ist meist ein Verbrechen, aber Proteste herauszufordern um sie niederzuschießen, ist Perversion.

Revolutions inevitably fail, he tells us, because those who come to power are corrupted by it and reject the values and principles they initially embraced.

Scriptures are not to be pitted against the Spirit. Scripture can be understood only through the same Spirit whereby it is given.31 The Scriptures, inspired by the Spirit, form the written rule by which the Spirit thereafter leads us into all truth.32

The main point that nullification addresses is that a government allowed to determine the scope of its own powers cannot remain limited for long.

Government departments are arranged hierarchically; those at the top are used to issuing orders and expect them to be carried out by their subordinates right down the line. Minow assumed that a cultural institution like television has a similar hierarchical structure, as if television executives could requisition more creative programming the way a bureaucrat orders new pencils or department stationery.

No oppressive government can survive if it has to use force to get people to obey its commands. What government must do is get the people to buy in, to voluntarily support their own oppressors, or the system will collapse.

The issue is whether the orders are morally acceptable or not, and that question is not answered by anti-intellectual demands of obedience.

state says it is. It will provide services you do not want, will never use, and may even find morally repugnant, and then tell you what you must pay for them.

Unchecked power is an invitation to tyranny.