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Authority Quotes

Browse 3390 quotes about Authority.

Authority Quotes

“No one can learn tolerance in a climate of irresponsibility, which does not produce democracy. The act of tolerating requires a climate in which limits may be established, in which there are principles to be respected. That is why tolerance is not coexistence with the intolerable. Under an authoritarian regime, in which authority is abused, or a permissive one, in which freedom is not limited, one can hardly learn tolerance. Tolerance requires respect, discipline, and ethics.”

May Doe Principles Democracy Society Produce Discipline Limits Authority Ethics Climate Tolerance Regimes Coexistence Irresponsibility

Author:Paulo Freire

“If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.”

Source: American Institutions and Their Influence

“Sincere thought, real free thought, ready, in the name of superhuman authority or of humble common sense, to question the basis of what is officially taught and generally accepted, is less and less likely to thrive. It is, we repeat, by far easier to enslave a literate people than an illiterate one, strange as this may seem at first sight. And the enslavement is more likely to be lasting.”

Source: The Lightning and the Sun

“Say did you read in the papers about a bunch of Women up in British Columbia as a protest against high taxes, sit out in the open naked, and they wouldent put their clothes on? The authorities finally turned a Sprayer that you use on trees, on 'em. That may lead into quite a thing. Woman comes into the tax office nude, saying I won't pay. Well they can't search her and get anything. It sounds great. How far is it to British Columbia?”

Wells May Use Sound Pay Tree Taxes Office Authority Paper Clothes British Bunch Naked Ems Protest Papers Columbia British Columbia High Taxes

Book:Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Harding

Source: Will Rogers' Weekly Articles: The Harding

“The highest reach of science is, one may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin to the highest power exercised in poetry; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well be eminent in science; and we have Newton. Shakspeare [sic] and Newton: in the intellectual sphere there can be no higher names. And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription and routine, the fullest room to expand as it will.”

Men Wells May Science Spirit Names Energy Nations Rooms Genius Higher Demand Authority Highest Intellectual Independence Faculty Routine Spheres Newton Prescriptions

Author:Matthew Arnold

“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.”

Ifs May Has Beens Made Particular Authority Raised Congress Arise Welfare Application General Welfare

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 ...

Source: The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787 ...

“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.”

People Men Kind May Hard Feelings Suffering Opportunity Religious Hard Work Degrees Authority Unhappy Priests Distress Outlook Unworthy Free Time Time Heals Positivism

Author:Robert Sheaffer

“The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived.”

Giving Firsts Wells May Ideas Soul Reason Might Next Father Teach Divine Son Authority Highest Angel Being True Coming Out

Author:Meister Eckhart

“Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law.”

May Law Purpose Justice Produce Judging Authority Court Forgotten Lawyer Obedience Court System

Author:Charley Reese

“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.”

“Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of the law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government.”

Source: The art and craft of judging: the decisions of Judge Learned Hand

“If we have nothing to do but service our own pleasure - because society has taught us that's all we're worth and we're exiled from positions of authority from which we could actually shape society - then we just become hedonists. Eventually, despite how great it may look on Saturday night, come Monday morning there's just purposelessness.”

Ifs Looks May Night Pleasure Morning Position Taught Shapes Authority Despite Saturday Monday Taught Us Saturday Night Monday Morning Purposelessness Hedonist

Author:Clive Barker

“In the sixties, the recycling of pop culture turning it into Pop art and camp had its own satirical zest. Now we're into a different kind of recycling. Moviemakers give movies of the past an authority that those movies didn't have; they inflate images that may never have compelled belief, images that were no more than shorthand gestures and they use them not as larger-than-life jokes but as altars.”

“The physical power to get the money does not seem to me a test of the right to tax. Might does not make right even in taxation. To hold that what the use of official authority may get the state may keep, and that if it cannot get hold of a nonresident stockholder it may hold the company as hostage for him, is strange constitutional doctrine to me.”

Ifs May Doe States Use Seems Might Company Strange Taxes Authority Tests Doctrine Officials Taxation Hostage

Author:Robert H. Jackson

“If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord's word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah's testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah's fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts.”

“I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty , and on the other side for too much Authority , 'tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.”

Knows World Way May Hard Seems Sides Liberty Too Much Authority Favors

Book:Leviathan

Source: Leviathan

“The phrase "may you live in interesting times" is the lowest in a trilogy of Chinese curses that continue "may you come to the attention of those in authority" and finish with "may the gods give you everything you ask for." I have no idea about its authenticity.”

Giving May Ideas Asks Interesting Attention Authority Authenticity Chinese No Idea Curse Phrases Lowest Trilogies Interesting Times

Author:Terry Pratchett

“The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”

People May Together Social Authority Labor Relation Debate Spheres Relevant Commodity Governing Bourgeois

Author:Jurgen Habermas

“What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues, not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.”

May States Felt Virtue Authority Weakness Court Simplicity London Reform Manners Isolation Enlightened Defects Renewal Multiplicity Salons

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.”

Writing Firsts May Desire Views Principles Ought Essentials Authority Customs Dictator Novelty Attainment Endeavour Breaking Rules Beauty Within

Book:Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings

Source: Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings

“In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision on whether and when to pray.”

Trying May Facts Use Government Individual Community Prayer Decision Powerful Atheism Influence Effects Praying Authority Positive Atheism

Author:Barbara Brandriff Crabb

“Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be; their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men's consciences; they therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to tell the truth.”

Men May Country Atheism Authority Conscience Aim Positive Atheism Telling The Truth Theologian

Author:Frederick The Great

“The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.”

Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think

“God does not weigh criminality in our scales. We have one absolute, with the seal of authority upon it; and with us an ounce is an ounce, and a pound a pound. God's measure is the heart of the offender,--a balance which varies with every one of us, a balance so delicate that a tear cast in the other side may make the weight of error kick the beam.”

Heart May Doe Sides Tears Balance Authority Judgment Weight Absolutes Errors Casts Scales Kicks Pounds Delicate Vary Beam Seals Offenders Criminality

Author:James Russell Lowell

“An earthly immortality belongs to a great and good character. History embalms it; it lives in its moral influence, in its authority, in its example, in the memory of the words and deeds in which it was manifested; and as every age adds to the illustrations of its efficacy, it may chance to be the best understood by a remote posterity.”

Source: Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions

“We are His children in Very deed, having been born of Him in the spirit, and we have inherited the very attributes which he possesses. They are in us, and they make us God's embryo, We believe that as we are now God once was, and by the practice of virtue and righteousness, by obedience unto law and authority, He has become what He is, and as He is, man may become, on the same principle.”

Men Believe May Children Law Spirit Born Principles Practice Virtue Authority Deeds Obedience Righteousness Attributes Embryos

Author:George F. Richards

“Men of authority and influence may promote good morals. Let them in their several stations encourage virtue. Let them favor and take part in any plans which may be formed for the advancement of morality.”

Men May Moral Virtue Plans Influence Morality Authority Favors Stations Advancement Good Moral

Author:William Wilberforce

“The opposite of thinking clearly is being muddled. To be conscious of being muddled is a horrible experience. To avoid it we may even be tempted to shut our minds and swallow a belief, ready-made, from some expert authority.”

Thinking Mind May Made Belief Ready Authority Conscious Opposites Horrible Experts Tempted Horrible Experience Thinking Clearly

Author:Susan Stebbing

“It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

“When the man who knows all about the fruit fly chromosomes finds himself sitting next to an authority on Beowulf, there may be an uneasy silence.”

Knows Men May Next Silence He Man Authority Sitting Fruit Uneasy Chromosomes Fruit Flies

Author:Brand Blanshard

“... liberal intellectualstend to have a classical theory of politics, in which the state has a monopoly of power; hoping thatthose in positions of authority may prove to be enlightened men, wielding power justly, they are natural, if cautious, allies of the "establishment.”

Ifs Men May States Politics Natural Position Theory Prove Authority Liberalism Enlightened Allies Establishment Monopoly Cautious Wielding Power

Author:Susan Sontag

“Authorities say brain cells may shrink, but they don't necessarily die. Frankly, I am cheered by the fact that something is shrinking. I'd be even more thrilled if what was shrinking affected my dress size, but you can't have everything.”

Ifs May Facts Dies Brain Authority Dresses Size Cells Affected Shrinks Shrinking Brain Cells

Author:Erma Bombeck

“Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.”

“The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.”

May Government Individual Belief Religious Justice Views Doors Groups Exercise Authority Regulation Affirmation Religious Belief Clauses Government Regulation Abhorrent

Author:William J. Brennan

“Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.”

Source: The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley

“That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.”

People May Has Beens Whole Government Opinion Principles Written Limits Authority Bases Constitution Originals Fundamentals Forgotten Supreme Defined Permanent Fabric Mistaken Legislature

Author:John Marshall

“Single parents in particular may have trouble maintaining themselves as authority figures because of underlying guilt; they feel acontinuing sense that they have deprived their kids of the second parent, and so they tend to give in to the children's requests, even when unreasonable.”

Giving Feels May Children Kids Parent Trouble Figures Particular Discipline Authority Guilt Maintaining Deprived Request Unreasonable Single Parent Authority Figures

Author:Marge M. Kennedy

“The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.”

May Made States Lasts Party Authority Capacity Sufficient Sovereign Resorts Magnitude Compact Tribunals Nullification

Book:1829-1836

Source: 1829-1836

“No theory of my own will ever stand in the way of my executing, in good faith, any order I may receive from those in authority over me.”

Way May Order My Own Theory Authority Good Faith Executing

Book:Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs & Selected Letters: Library of America #50

Source: Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs & Selected Letters: Library of America #50

“When you stand in your own authority, based in your own direct experience, you meet that ultimate mystery that you are. Even though it may be at first unsettling to look into your own no-thingness, you do it anyway. Why? Because you no longer want to suffer. Because you're willing to be disturbed. You're willing to be amazed. You're willing to be surprised. You're willing to realize that maybe everything you've ever thought about yourself really isn't true.”

Want Firsts Looks May Suffering Realizing Mystery Willing Authority Direct Ultimate About Yourself Amazed Disturbed

Book:Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

Source: Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering

“Leadership is a choice. It's not a rank, it's a choice. I know many people who are at the top of their organization who have authority. We have to do what they say because they have authority over us. But they're not leaders. We wouldn't follow them. They may be at the top of the company but they're not leaders.”

People Knows May Choices Company Leader Authority Organization

Author:Simon Sinek

“The Lord's Prayer is short and mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses: it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every petition, that by so excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God.”

Knows May Spirit Prayer Lord Authority Draws Senses Treasure Mysterious Excellent Praying To God Latent Petitions

Book:The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: Life of Christ

Source: The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor ...: Life of Christ

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”

Source: The Works of Francis Bacon

“No power but Congress can declare war, but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war?”

Ifs May War Values Peace President Military Movement Authority Congress Antiwar Provision

Book:Dinner to the Hon. D. W. ... by the merchants, and other citizens of Philadelphia, December 2, 1846, with Mr. W.'s speech

Source: Dinner to the Hon. D. W. ... by the merchants, and other citizens of Philadelphia, December 2, 1846, with Mr. W.'s speech

“We are here for the purpose of redeeming and regenerating the earth on which we live, and God has placed his authority and his counsels here upon the earth for that purpose, that men may learn to do the will of God on the earth as it is done in heaven. This is the object of our existence.”

Men May Done Earth Purpose Heaven Existence Learning Objects Authority Gods Will Redeeming

Book:John Taylor

Source: John Taylor

“In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper judge; and revelation, though it may, in consenting with it, confirm its dictates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, where we have the clear and evident sentience of reason, to quit it for the contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith: which can have no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason.”

May Ideas Matter Reason Faith Opinion Principles Cases Clear Judging Authority Evidence All Things Contrary Quitting Revelations Evident Obliged Decree Pretence

Book:An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Source: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? ... [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States.”

“The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down... forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet it either does not observe them or it despises them, or it gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.”

“There may be babblers, wholly ignorant of mathematics, who dare to condemn my hypothesis, upon the authority of some part of the Bible twisted to suit their purpose. I value them not, and scorn their unfounded judgment.”

May Purpose Values Authority Judgment Mathematics Dare Ignorant Suits Hypothesis Twisted Scorn

Author:Nicolaus Copernicus

“Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so may separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself.”

Ifs Wells May Courses Sides Hours Lines Results Moral Youth Drink Authority Anxiety Finals Busy Saint Practicals Permanent Experts Spheres Drunkards

Book:Habit

Source: Habit