Quotes About Authority

Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

Soon the mercilessly even drumbeat fill'd the Day, replacing the accustom'd rhythms of country People with the controlling Pulse of military Clock-Time, announcing that all events would now occur at the army's Pleasure, upon the army's schedule.

The moment of assassination is the moment when power and the ignorance of power come together, with Death as validator.

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

Why will the Structure allow every other kind of sexual behavior but that one? Because submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival. They cannot be wasted in private sex. In any kind of sex. It needs our submission so that it can co-opt us into its own power game. There is no joy in it, only power. I tell you, if S and M could be established universally, at the family level, the State would wither away.

Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Everyone may be called comrade, but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.

The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so.

Government "planning" is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people's plans.

In short, the anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.

When the anointed say that there is a crisis this means that something must be done—and it must be done simply because the anointed want it done.

There cannot be a law-abiding society if no one knows in advance what law they are to abide by, but must wait for judges to create ex post facto legal rulings based on "evolving standards" rather than known rules.

As George J. Stigler said of some of his fellow Nobel Laureates, they "issue stern ultimata to the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis.

Choice, like behavior and performance, is often circumvented by the vocabulary of the anointed.

The idea of rescuing oppressed minorities ignored the prospect—since become a reality—that oppressed minorities who became rulers of their own nations would immediately begin oppressing other minorities under their control.

the idea of separated powers and of rules governing all the contenders for power became imbedded in British tradition over the centuries.

Jose loved giving orders to the servants, and they loved obeying her. She always made them feel they were taking part in some drama.

The Bible is inherently political in that it routinely speaks against people who abuse their power in order to oppress other people.

It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.

Trump seems pleased to play the role that his followers have assigned him. He is obliging them by behaving like a monarch—or, some might say, a mad king.