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Authority Quotes

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Authority Quotes

“No power of earth, or hell, men or devils, can possibly stand against the word of God; and hence it is the very height of folly and wild madness for any one to set up his thoughts or reasonings in opposition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture; and, on the other hand, it is the beginning and end of all true wisdom to submit in all things to the absolute authority of that Word which is settled forever in Heaven.”

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Author:Charles Henry Mackintosh
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“Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.”

StatesDreamGovernmentChoicesFatherIndividualLeftLibertyAuthorityUltimateConstitutionAlternativesWelfareConsistentFoundingTotalitarianismOur Founding FathersOrderlyOur ChoicesWelfare StateIndividual LibertyIndividual FreedomLargesse
Book:Speaking my mind: selected speeches
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“In an effort to civilize combat sports, authorities mandated padded gloves and instantly made the sports far more savage. Granted, putting gloves on the hands seems like a nice thing to do. If you were being punched in the brain by a powerful man, wouldn't you rather he strap a pillow around his fist? But the glove doesn't do anything to diminish your brain damage.”

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Author:Jonathan Gottschall
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“The Trans Pacific Partnership (and fast-track authority to whisk it through Congress without debate) is fast approaching. If you haven't seen our video about it, please watch. If you have, please share. And mobilize and organize friends and colleagues to call their senators and representatives to tell them to vote against this reprehensible deal.”

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Author:Robert Reich
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“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

PeopleFeelsChildrenHandsAmericaLostInterestAbilityDarknessIssuesAuthorityCriticalFeel GoodMy ChildrenAgendasFacultyDeclineSuperstitionsTechnologicalGrandchildrenSlidesCrystalsNoticingRepresentingConsultingPublic InterestForebodingHoroscopes
Author:Carl Sagan
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“How can I be expected to believe that this same racial discrimination which has been the cause of so much injustice and suffering right through the years, should now operate here to give me a fair and open trial?....consider myself neither morally nor legally obliged to obey laws made by a Parliament in which I am not represented. That the will of the people is the basis of the authority of government, is a principle universally acknowledged as sacred throughout the civilized world.”

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Author:Nelson Mandela
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“The effect of our knowledge rather ought to be, first, to teach us reverence and fear; and, secondly, to induce us, under its guidance and teaching, to ask every good thing from [God], and, when it is received, ascribe it to him. For how can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving rise to the thought, that since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation, to submit to his authority?-\-\that your life is due to him?-\-\that whatever you do ought to have reference to him.”

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Book:The Institutes Of The Christian Religion, Books First and Second
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“Money cannot be applied to the *general welfare*, otherwise than by an application of it to some *particular* measure conducive to the general welfare. Whenever, therefore, money has been raised by the general authority, and is to be applied to a particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the money requisite for it may be applied to it; if it be not, no such application can be made.”

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Book:The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787 ...
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“The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.”

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Author:Robert Sheaffer
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“Self-confidence is inseparable from submission to the creedal order, and through that order, to the supreme authority expressed in that order. ... Deep individualism cannot exist except in relation to the highest authority. No inner discipline can operate without a charismatic institution, nor can such an institution survive without that supreme authority from a relation to whom self-confidence derives. Without an authority deeply installed, there is no foundation for individuality. Self-confidence thus expresses submission to supreme authority.”

SelfOrderDisciplineAuthorityHighestRelationInstitutionsFoundationIndividualitySelf ConfidenceSupremeIndividualismSubmissionInseparableCharismatic
Author:Philip Rieff
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“Usually without realizing it, our ultimate peace starts and ends in the authority of God alone, which means the solution to living in joy, peace, and harmony with our fellow men has been here for all since the beginning of mankind and throughout civilization. I have yet to feel the urge to argue politics: it reminds me of getting off the freeway to sit in raging traffic.”

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Author:Criss Jami
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“The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority.”

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Author:Nikolai Berdyaev
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“The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively.”

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Book:The Emperor's Handbook: A New Translation of The Meditations
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“With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.”

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Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!”

GivingHas BeensFallLanguageDifficultAuthorityLosingLowsMiracleErrorsMeritAcquireDiamondLiableMeannessTreacheryBeholderExaltationDazzle
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare them for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood.”

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Book:Democracy in America
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“In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”

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Book:Democracy in America: Book One
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“Perhaps even more than constituted authority, it is social uniformity and sameness that harass the individual most. His very "uniqueness," "separateness" and "differentiation" make him an alien, not only in his native place, but even in his own home. Often more so than the foreign born who generally falls in with the established.”

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Book:Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader
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“The great interests of an agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing nation are so linked in union together that no permanent cause of prosperity to one of them can operate without extending its influence to the others. All these interests are alike under the protecting power of the legislative authority, and the duties of the representative bodies are to conciliate them in harmony together.”

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Book:John Quincy Adams, 1767-1848; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids
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“If one starts with the assumption that, in the absence of specific Congressional authority, a fixed rule of law precludes contracting officers from providing in a Government contract terms reasonably calculated to assure its performance even though there be no money loss through a particular default, there is no problem. But answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question, and thereby begging the real one.”

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Author:Felix Frankfurter
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“Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanction of political authority is not necessary for its existence. Certain commodities came to be money quite naturally, as the result of economic relationships that were independent of the power of the state.”

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Author:Carl Menger
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“Classic was Jimmy Savile’s use of the cloak of authority and kindness. Savile’s celebrity allowed him to acquire this authority. As we consider the regulation of the media and the legal right to privacy it is worth reflecting on how the Savile scandal happened. It happened because the aura of Sir Jimmy’s celebrity protected him from scrutiny by the press.”

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Author:Daniel Finkelstein
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“It is far more rational to suppose that the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority.”

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Book:The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution
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“It was necessary for the Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that He might reappear as an inward principle of life. Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a Christ without us, but as a " Christ within us, the hope of glory.”

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Book:ser. 1 God's revelation of heaven [and other sermons]. ser. 2 Christ's judgement respecting inheritance [and other sermons]. ser. 3 The tongue [and other sermons
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“As the base rhetorician uses language to increase his own power, to produce converts to his own cause, and to create loyal followers of his own person - so the noble rhetorician uses language to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority, to encourage them to think and speak clearly, and to teach them to be their own masters.”

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Author:Thomas Szasz
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“I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age.”

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Book:Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts
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“I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.”

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Book:Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait
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