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Authority Quotes

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Authority Quotes

“Over the years, my books have been given a lot more credence than they should. I don't think people should take them quite that seriously. They're not a theological treatise; they were never intended to be. I find myself in awkward situations sometimes because people think I'm some great authority on spiritual warfare, but I'm not. I never have been.”

“By the way, one other thing, T-Mobile, these cellular providers offer all kinds of data deals to get you to sign up. You can stream Netflix on T-Mobile, I think, with no cap. There's all kinds of opportunities for people out there. You don't need command-and-control central authority trying to regulate all of this stuff because all of it, again, is about punishing success from the left.”

“People equate job titles to levels of creativity. We think that musicians are creative while accountants are not. Job title has nothing to do with human creativity. In fact, we all have enormous creative potential. Even those that often state with authority that "I'm not creative." With a systematic approach to building creative capacity, we all have the opportunity to create and leave a mark on the world.”

“Because of the men in charge of this system, they've created this caste system for women that gives some of the women in higher places a false sense of authority. You have women who are able to just look at other women and from the color of the clothes they are wearing and they can know how they're supposed to interact with each other. It's a really horrible thing but genius in a way to pit them against each other because once you are, there is no community anymore. There is just people trying to keep each other down.”

“Some people think that in order to lead a morally decent life one may sometimes have to forego the possibility of having a good life oneself. Even if that is true, it does not render morality incredible, but it does raise a question about morality's authority: about what one has most reason to do when one is faced with a conflict of this kind.”

“I suspect the popularity of young adults and dystopian novels has something to do with a desire for allegory and old-fashioned morality tales. In fact, you might find your religious framework here in dystopian, post-apocalyptic fiction. Here, and in videogames, you find strict codes of authority, the "rules of the game," the life-or-death quest and struggle that people crave.”

“I'm a critic. That means you are a writer. So, yes, you have to make yourself an authority on whatever subject it's going to be. Music, movies, literature, whatever it's going to be, but what you really want to do is learn your trade by reading other writers. I think you have to read veraciously, especially people who have done what you have done to see how it's been done in the past; what works, what doesn't work.”

“The life before '68 was very different from the life after '68. Before '68, our days were full of authoritarian moments. There were authorities everywhere. In fact, the movement of '68 was young people against their authorities, children against their parents. And that remained. The most important thing of all, the thing that lasted, was the first feminist movement and the position of women in society. That completely changed and that was very, very important.”

“My background is such that I am uneasy about religious laws, I think there's always a real danger when you start appealing to a higher authority. It's self-righteousness, it's not righteousness, it's self-righteousness that takes control. But I think that it's absolutely crucial that that's not confused with the debate that takes place over Shari'a law in Great Britain at the moment. Because as far as anybody is concerned, when you talk about Shari'a courts now you're talking about - I don't know what people think.”

“I think America is really well-positioned, because we do train people to be creative and sometimes resist authority, which helps in being an innovator. I think you're going to see for the next phase of the revolution all sorts of wonderful ways of connecting art and literature and journalism into new forms of digital expression.”

“I think the desire to be a journalist started post-911. I'm Syrian American. I speak fluent Arabic. I'd come back to the States for college. I went to Skidmore in upstate New York. I was coming from Turkey, and I'd noticed that I could talk about concepts and ideas and people who seemed foreign to Americans, and they were interested in what I had to say. I think some of it is maybe because I'm very unassuming and I look American, but I'm very much from there as well so I can speak with authority about all of these issues.”

“I think now that I've tried directing, I'm not interested in doing adaptations anymore. I could do an adaptation of someone else's work that I would write, but the idea of taking someone else's material entirely doesn't interest me. One of the things that I found really helpful, at least in my mind - and I've never discussed this with the actors or with the people I work with - is that being a neophyte in directing, I feel like I have a kind of authority simply because I'm the writer as well.”

“You will launch many projects, but have time to finish only a few. So think, plan, develop, launch and tap good people to be responsible. Give them authority and hold them accountable. Trying to do too much yourself creates a bottleneck.”

“Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

“People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer's slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue.”

“Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.”

“An old market had stood there until I'd been about six years old, when the authorities had renamed it the Olde Market, destroyed it, and built a new market devoted to selling T-shirts and other objects with pictures of the old market. Meanwhile, the people who had operated the little stalls in the old market had gone elsewhere and set up a thing on the edge of town that was now called the New Market even though it was actually the old market.”

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

“What we really need is somebody who loves us so much we don’t worry about death, or about [anything for that matter]… We need this; we need this so we can love other people purely and not for selfish gain, we need this so we can see everybody as equals, we need this so our relationships can be sincere, we need this so we can stop kicking ourselves around, we need this so we can lose all self-awareness and find ourselves for the first time, not by realizing some dream, but by being told who we are by the only Being who has the authority to know, by that I mean the Creator.”

“The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.”