Authority Quotes

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved die absolute rejection of authority.

Anonymous

All authority belongs to the people.

Thomas Jefferson

The highest duty is to respect authority.

Pope Leo

Don't listen to a man who says we have to work together as a team. He means we have to work as he says.

C.J. Langenhoven

I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.

Rita Mae Brown

How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.

John Bevere

It has often been suggested to me that the Constitution of the United States is a sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it pretends to guarantee is very limited. I have not been impressed with the adequacy of the safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse their power. And the instances when they do not do so are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the Constitution playing any liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose philanthropic aim is selling America out. He accepts the standards of conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum, toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs are turned out like buttons or automobile tires--all cast from the same mold.

Emma Goldman

It does not mean much to be important. The most important man at a burial is dead.

C.J. Langenhoven

He was one of those characters who felt that a weak handshake could somehow damage his authority, which meant that every handshake had to bloody hurt.

Adrian McKinty

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird.

Rosemary Clement-Moore

My grandmother simply shook her head and said, "You know what you saw. The bird doesn't need to be counted, and neither do you.

Terry Tempest Williams

Her mind moved around and around the subject, moving with a kind of fuzzy firmness. With no coherent thought process, she arrived at a conviction - a habit with the basically insecure; an insecurity whose seeds are invariably planted earlier, in under or over-protectiveness, in a distrust in parental authority which becomes all authority. It can later, with maturity - a flexible concept - be laughed away, dispelled by determined clear thinking. Or it can be encouraged by self-abusive resentment and brooding self-pity. It can grow ever greater until the original authority becomes intolerable, and a change becomes imperative. Not to a radical one in thinking; that would be too troublesome, too painful. The change is simply to authority in another guise which, in time, and under any great stress, must be distrusted and resented even more than the first.

Jim Thompson

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

...when the room goes silent, someone has spoken with authority...

John Geddes

...true authority is not based on control - it's based on truth...

John Geddes

The lesson I learned is that when you give someone authority, you must be conscious you are doing so and continue to ask yourself whether it is in your best interests.

Margie Warrell

We have already seen that when positive authority suggests a change in behavior, the recipient will accept it provided he is capable of doing so and provided it does not require drastic modification of belief or frustrate important needs. By carrying out the suggestion, one can simultaneously reduce dissonance and preserve intact one's relation to positive authority. But what can reasonably be expected when the suggestion to change is beyond the recipient's capability or frustrates his deep needs or predispositions? In such a situation, a conflict arises between his desire to comply with authority and the abilities or needs which make compliance impossible.One way to resolve such a conflict situation (or to reduce the dissonance) is to change one's conception of authority. If a suggestion emanating from positive authority is unacceptable, the conflict may be removed by becoming disaffected with the authority and transforming it either into a negative authority or into a nonexistent one. This is exactly what Leon and Joseph did.

Milton Rokeach

Helena, like many women who ruled their own lives, adored being told what to do when there was no obligation to follow the advice given.

Elizabeth Ironside

Those in authority within institutions and social structures attempt to justify their rule by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with moral symbols, sacred emblems, or legal formulae which are widely believed and deeply internalized. These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the 'votes of the majority,' the 'will of the people,' the 'aristocracy of talents or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings' or to the alleged extraordinary endowment of the person of the ruler himself.

C. Wright Mills

Certainly, a clear line must be preserved by strict discipline, and on the other hand the men must know that everything is done for them that hard times permit. On the top of that it follows that, among real men, what counts is deeds, not words; and then it comes of itself, when such are the relations between men and their leaders, that instead of opposition there is harmony between them. The leader is merely a clearer expression of the common will and an example of life and death. And there is no science in all this. It is a practical quality, the simple manly commonsense that is native to a sound and vigorous race.

Ernst Jünger

The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on the literal truth of scripture, they were effectively promoting a kind of secular rationalism that states that one does not need to have a religious experience of any kind to live a moral life: all one has to do is declare one’s faith in scripture, in the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity and such, and accept the authority of the Holy Catholic Church as God’s representative on Earth.

Daniel Waterman

You can't come in, colonel," she told him. "You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house.

Gabriel García Márquez

You are the authority and the gatekeeper of your own life.

Bryant McGill

PATCHES' OF AUTHORITYPreteens Adhere, Teens Challenge, Hideout, Elderly ShunKamil Ali

Kamil Ali

God is all powerful.God is mighty.God is has power over all rulers and authorities.

Laillah Gifty Akita

until he who possesses sapience comes, the one with knowledge shall be the hero

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.

John C. Polanyi

Obligation is a more effective weapon against the Will than any penalty, threat or act of force.

Ashim Shanker

When your authority comes straight from God, shit always turns ugly.

Matthew Woodring Stover

'And it means naught to you to obey your father's orders? Where is your fealty?' Christian felt his face flush with a surge of bitter rage. 'I keep faith with those who have kept faith with me.' William shook his head in disbelief. 'God save me from ever having sons like you.' 'I would wish it on no man,' Christian said sincerely.

Eli Easton

Peterson thought it an unusual friendship, one only the Army could forge.

David Halberstam

'But even I know that in your line of work, there's a difference between being a volunteer and being volun-told.'

T.J. Klune

Surround yourself with people too afraid to speak, and you left yourself to only your own ideas. That could be disastrous. It was important to have men who would question you and see flaws in your plans, so long as you could control them. It was all about control.

Brandon Sanderson

But I knew something that Elena hadn't. That the measure of a true queen didn't lie in her magic. It had more to do with who she was, and what she was willing to give of herself, than it did with the powers she possessed- Charlaina di Heyse

Kimberly Derting

But the fact that judges follow precedent regularly even though not invariably does not support the legalistic theory as strongly as one might expect. The original precedent in a line of precedents could not have been based on precedent.

Richard A. Posner

As we know, Rilke, under the influence of Auguste Rodin, whom he had assisted between 1905 and 1906 in Meudon as a private secretary, turned away from the art nouveau-like, sensitized-atmospheric poetic approach of his early years to pursue a view of art determined more strongly by the priority of the object. The proto-modern pathos of making way for the object without depicting it in a manner 'true to nature', like that of the old masters, led in Rilke's case to the concept of the thing-poem - and thus to a temporarily convincing new answer to the question of the source of aesthetic and ethical authority. From that point, it would be the things themselves from which all authority would come - or rather: from this respectively current singular thing that turns to me by demanding my full gaze. This is only possible because thing-being would now no longer mean anything but this: having something to say.

Peter Sloterdijk

Fortunately or unfortunately, the greatest authority on matters of life is life itself.

Raheel Farooq

Today, the mere idea of aristocracy is incompatible with the dominant ideology. But every people needs an aristocracy. It's an integral part of human nature and can't be dispensed with. The question then is not 'For or against aristocracy?' but 'What kind of aristocracy?

Guillaume Faye

For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.

Clifford D. Simak

For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to rememver the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.

G.K. Chesterton

All you need to be recognized as an authority is to be recognized by a recognized authority

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Phineas didn't really dislike West Point in particular or authority in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the backboard which returned all the insults he threw at it.

John Knowles

Marriag

Lisa Kleypas

One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else. This independence of science, its occasional unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less self critical, or with pretensions of certitude.

Carl Sagan

I often hear people talk about how corrupt their politicians are, it makes me laugh because, the very same people who are complaining are just as corrupt. When they get to those same places of authority, they do exactly the same thing for which they were complaining against the previous politicians.

Sunday Adelaja

Nothing is taken at face value anymore, everything must be dissected. Perhaps it is the rise of advertisement over church and state. Things once spoken were spoken with strength and authority. Now they are spoken with stealth and with guile. They are spoken not to the rational mind but to the sub-conscious, the mind within the mind.

James Rozoff

There is no method of self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result – and that is what we all want. We follow authority – if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology – because we want a result that will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system that assures us of a result. But the pursuit of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for certainty, and the result is obviously not the understand of oneself., When we follow a method, we must have authorities – the teacher, the guru, the savior, the Master – who will guarantee us what we desire, and surely that is not the way of self-knowledge. Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is noteworthy that at a time when every religious sanction of authority has vanished, we live in a very authoritarian epoch.

Nikolai A. Berdyaev

Authority is not a quality one person 'has,' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

Erich Fromm

When the locus of evaluation is seen as residing in the expert, it would appear that the long-range social implications are in the direction of the social control of the many by the few.

Carl R. Rogers

It is in our authority and power to stop torment and sickness and deliver people from vanity.

Sunday Adelaja

I think you are wrong, partner Elijah. My briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that, unlike the men of the Outer Worlds, they are trained from birth to accept authority. Apparently this is the result of your way of living. One man, representing authority firmly enough, was quite sufficient, as I proved. Your own desire for a squad car was only an expression, really, of your almost instinctive wish for superior authority to take responsibility out of your hands. On my own world, I admit that what I did would have been most unjustified.

Isaac Asimov

I daresay that the gradual “decomposition” of scripture, its dissolution in more and more specialized and negative criticism, is a result of its alienation from the eucharist – and practically from the Church herself – as an experience of a spiritual reality. And in its own turn, this same alienation deprived the sacrament of its evangelical content, converting it into a self-contained and self-sufficient “means of sanctification.” The scriptures and the Church are reduced here to the category of two formal *authorities*, two "sources of the faith"--as they are called in the scholastic treatises, for which the only question is which authority is the higher: which "interprets" which.As a matter of fact, by its own logic, this approach demands a further contraction, a further "reduction." For if we proclaim holy scripture to be the supreme authority for teaching the faith in the Church, then what is the “criterion” of scripture? Sooner or later it becomes “biblical science” – i.e., in the final analysis, naked reason. But if, on the other hand, we proclaim the Church to be the definitive, highest and inspired interpreter of scripture, then through whom, where and how is this interpretation brought about? And however we answer this question, this “organ” or “authority” in fact proves to be standing over the scriptures, as an *outside* authority.

Alexander Schmemann

Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn't based on consensus. It's based on consent. Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. The Marines allowed me to be their commander, and they could revoke their permission at any time.

Nathaniel Fick

Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree.

Frans de Waal

People respond more to the authority of status, than the authority of truth.

A.J. Darkholme

Being an authority on paper does not immediately grant you authority over a group until it is earned by you and given by them.

A.J. Darkholme

Authority is ability to rule. Dominion is rulership.

Sherry K. White

There was a time where I thought authorities are always right.

Zybejta Beta Metani'Marashi

The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist.

Richard Dawkins

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Authority Quotes

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