General Authority Quotes

#1. If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.

Thomas Jefferson

#2. As a General Authority, it is my responsibility to preach general principles. When I do, I don't try to define all the exceptions... I only teach the general rules. Whether an exception applies to you is your responsibility. You must work out individually between you and the Lord.

Dallin H. Oaks

#3. They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.

John Dryden

#4. At certain times and in certain schools it is orthodox to be a rebel; and in general it is a very poor class that does not contain at least three pupils who can be counted on to oppose the teachers authority and loudly and persistently to question everything he says.

Gilbert Highet

#5. The truth is always the truth, although if a lie has been repeated enough, especially by a figure of authority, the general population will begin to see those lies as truth.

Joseph P. Kauffman

#6. This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage.

Italo Calvino

#7. Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

Millicent Fenwick

#8. They sent me the script, asking me to play the part of a general. I have never played the part of an authority figure. I've never thought of myself that way. I was uncomfortable with it, but I worked at it and knew I had a guttural voice for a general.

Mark Goddard

#9. In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file.

Mahatma Gandhi

#10. If there is disturbance in the camp, the general's authority is weak.

Sun Tzu

#11. We write out of our humanity by writing through our direct experience. That which is most personal is most general, which becomes both our insight and protection as a writers. This is our authority as women, as human beings.

Terry Tempest Williams

#12. Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

Vladimir Lenin

#13. Again men have been kept back as by a kind of enchantment from progress in science by reverence for antiquity, by the authority of men counted great in philosophy, and then by general consent.

Francis Bacon

#14. In general, women desire to rule over their husbands and lovers, to be the authority above them.

Geoffrey Chaucer

#15. There's a general assumption now that every man in a position of power is or will soon be corrupt and oppressive. Yet the Greeks understood and praised a positive male energy that has accepted authority.

Robert Bly

#16. This was about the time that my opinion of experts, and authority figures in general, began a steady descent that continues to this day.

Scott Adams

#17. When the general is weak and without authority; when his orders are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixed duties assigned to officers and men, and the ranks are formed in a slovenly haphazard manner, the result is utter disorganization.

Sun Tzu

#18. Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers.

Paul Graham

#19. The same divine authority that forbids the killing of a human being establishes certain exceptions, as when God authorizes killing by a general law or when He gives an explicit commission to an individual for a limited time.

Saint Augustine

#20. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

Thomas Jefferson

#21. The people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.

John Witherspoon

#22. 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

#23. Rousseau. - Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence of the lawgiver: - "If

Frederic Bastiat

#24. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible.

Charles Dickens

#25. A lot of people didn't like cops just on general principle. They had no problem calling us when they were in need of our services, though. Even the ones that had a problem with our authority, like

Lani Lynn Vale

#26. When I started working in a feminist feminine magazine all my life was about rebelling against male authority, which is authority in general is male, so it was rebelling against everything. Everything that was around me made me angry.

Isabel Allende

#27. Our own unresolved authority problems from our youth sometimes get transferred to our youthful patients, because we are still "covert adolescent rebels." In subtle ways, we encourage the adolescent patient to rebel towards parents, school authorities, and society in general.

Virgil Miller Newton

#28. As the histories of ancient and modern democracies illustrate, the pressure of political movement in times of war, civil commotion, or general anxiety pushes in the direction of authority, not away from it.

Robert Heilbroner

#29. I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

Elena Kagan

#30. If we put a gun to her head she would sing all day. Try it first with a bird, General Benjamin said gently to Alfredo. Like our soprano, they have no capacity to understand authority. The bird doesn't know enough to be afraid and the person holding the gun will only end up looking like a lunatic.

Ann Patchett