Quotes About Authority

#1. Unemployment or the loss of income which will always affect some in any society is certainly less degrading if it is the result of misfortune and not deliberately imposed by authority.

Friedrich Hayek

#2. Anyone who sets themselves up as an authority on life is a charlatan.

Marty Rubin

#3. In my experience I haven't met too many uptight black people. I'm sure they're out there. Like I'm some big authority and I've lived in the inner city and ghetto.

Paul Reubens

#4. The confession of the authority of the Word of God can never be isolated from the saving content of the Word of God.

G. C. Berkouwer

#5. Tis a dangerous thing to ingage the authority of Scripture in disputes about the Natural World, in opposition to Reason; lest Time, which brings all things to light, should discover that to be evidently false which we had made Scripture to assert.

Thomas Burnet

#6. I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it.

Henry A. Wise

#7. The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

Karl Popper

#8. Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.

Golda Meir

#9. God is inseparably linked to the coming of Pentecost. In a certain sense, Jesus lacked the authority to dispatch the Spirit prior to His ascension.

R.C. Sproul

#10. Unlike the in-your-face authority of other Doms, Master Jake's power was a lazy riptide, drawing a submissive under his command before she even realized she'd surrendered.

Cherise Sinclair

#11. The Prussian state is, for Hegel, the model most akin to the rational state because it represents, thanks both to the Protestant religion and the authority of the monarchy, a synthesis between the revolutionary exigencies of principles and the traditional exigencies of organization.

Leo Strauss

#12. There should be no effort, consciously or otherwise, that will lead to the erosion of institutional credibility and authority.

Pratibha Patil

#13. If every day of your life you are told by authority figures that the Earth is flat, you will be scared of falling off the edge whether you want to be or not.

Mark Rippetoe

#14. I owe my dogs much - more than I can say - but they are not my 'companions' - as if we voluntarily chose to hang out together but none of us has authority over the others. I bought and/or acquired them. I own them. I am profoundly responsible for their care and well being.

Jon Katz

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

Bangambiki Habyarimana

#16. One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China's Communists.

Dalai Lama

#17. The new Constitution, however, is brought to us by a Muse, ordained by the authority of the People, and established at the center of our common life. We can read these words as creating a national religion, one at which we still worship.

Garrett Epps

#18. It is incumbent upon everyone to aid those daysprings of authority and sources of command who are adorned with the ornamant of equity and justice.

Baha'u'llah

#19. Fear above all, capricious authority.

Brian Bennudriti

#20. In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all.

Strobe Talbott

#21. The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.

Chris Hedges

#22. The tensions between authority and the people need to be heard, especially when they are suffering and they can't eat.

Ralph Fiennes

#23. The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

Thomas Hobbes

#24. Authority is quite degrading.

Oscar Wilde

#25. I have always admired stylishly confident women who dress with great authority. This lifelong love of elegance began with the humble wardrobe of my late grandmother Mrs. Bennie Frances Davis.

Andre Leon Talley

#26. Everyone in a position of authority is hysterical, and everyone else is pretending to be asleep.

Samuel R. Delany

#27. I am not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnic homogeneous neighborhoods.

Jimmy Carter

#28. Not every defeat of authority is a gain for individual freedom, nor every judicial rescue of a convict a victory for liberty.

Robert H. Jackson

#29. When the room goes silent, someone has spoken with authority ...

John Geddes

#30. All authority comes from the people.

Michael Davies

#31. In The Woman Reader Kate Flint argues that "the study of reading...involves examining a fulcrum: the meeting-place of discourses of subjectivity and socialization." Reading has traditionally been "a prime tool in socialization" and is "centrally bound in with questions of authority".

Ann Romines

#32. REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience.

Ambrose Bierce

#33. I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.

Patrick O'Brian

#34. The reason America is in its death-throes is because America has lost moral authority.

Bryant McGill

#35. Act in such a way that your humility may not be weakness, nor your authority be severity. Justice must be accompanied by humility, that humility may render justice lovable.

Pope Gregory I

#36. Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.

Frank S. Meyer

#37. There was a good moment in Islam when people were actually challenging authority at every level. Very different from the world we live in.

Tariq Ali

#38. That's the thing about independently minded children. You bring them up teaching them to question authority, and you forget that the very first authority they question is you.

Susan Sarandon

#39. To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated.

John Holdren

#40. Were it possible so to accelerate the intercourse between every part of the globe that all its inhabitants could be united under the superintending authority of an ecumenical Council, how great a portion of human evils would be avoided.

James Madison

#41. As we live together in Scripture as "Our One True Story of God for the Whole World," we come to know its authority in and through Jesus Christ.22 Anything less reduces Scripture to a collection of facts or feelings.

David E. Fitch

#42. Authority is established by God for the wellbeing of His people

Sunday Adelaja

#43. The true guide of our conduct is no outward authority, but the voice of God, who comes down to dwell in our souls, who knows all our thoughts, to whom are owing all the truth we know, and all the good we do; for vice is voluntary, and virtue comes from the grace of the heavenly spirit within.

Lord Acton

#44. The authority of a belief imposed by religion surely destroys the discovery of reality.One relies on authority because one is afraid to stand alone.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#45. I think when judges are in the position of authority, they really get bent out of shape when someone tells them they acted inappropriately.

Matt Gonzalez

#46. Find ways to decentralize. Move decision making authority down and out. Encourage a more entrepreneurial approach.

Donald Rumsfeld

#47. I think Americans still can't help but respond to the natural authority of this voice. Deep down they long to be told what to do by a British accent. That's why so many infomercials have British people.

John Oliver

#48. I can't quite count the ways in which we hurt one another. It was the means by which we tried to help one another - me, turning her into a patient, her, turning me into a dull authority - which were as bad as, if not worse, than our actual abuses.

Hanif Kureishi

#49. The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.

Noah Webster

#50. I don't run behind authority.

Naguib Sawiris

#51. I was delighted to see him growing more cautious and skeptical about what he heard, especially when he heard it from someone in apparent authority. I think that is fundamental to a good education. And if it comes back to bite me from time to time, that's a price worth paying.

Martine Millman

#52. Do not believe anything on the mere authority of teachers or priests. Accept as true and as the guide to your life only that which accords with your own reason and experience, after thorough investigation. Accept only that which contributes to the well-being of yourself and others.

Gautama Buddha

#53. If all Christians must surrender their bodies to God in Christ whenever they enter the fellowship of Christ's body, then it should come as no great shock that God might actually make demands of those Christians and their bodies - demands proving that God, and God alone, has authority over us.

Wesley Hill

#54. Sojourner [Truth]'s life exemplifies the process that occurs within ourselves as we grow to understand that we hold the authority to shape our own lives. This inner authority came when she embraced all of herself, which enabled her to speak from an authentic voice.

Helen LaKelly Hunt

#55. The press ... traditionally sides with authority and the establishment.

Sam Donaldson

#56. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop.

Maria Mitchell

#57. Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.

Gerry Spence

#58. Embracing new things often requires us to embrace our fears, however trivial they may seem. You deal with fear not by pretending it doesn't exist, but by refusing to give it decision-making authority.

Chris Guillebeau

#59. Those in true spiritual authority have neither the desire nor the need to control anyone, either directly or subversively.

Thea Harris

#60. When it comes to adding authority to the sermon, the Bible is the most powerful way to comment on what the Bible has to say.

Calvin Miller

#61. In an age that is sometimes nowadays frightening or confusing, we feel reassured by the almost parental-like authority of experts who tell us so clearly what it is we can and cannot do.

Noreena Hertz

#62. Existentialist philosophy recognizes the existence of the individual as the real purpose of human life. The recognition is basically atheistic and it encourages the individual to free himself from the impositions of custom, governmental authority, economic pressures, and cultural inhibitions.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

#63. The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.

Tom Robbins

#64. Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured.

William Shakespeare

#65. Write from Beyond what you know. From the authority of your senses. -author of Meditations in Green

Steven Wright

#66. Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?

William O. Douglas

#67. Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty.

Orson Scott Card

#68. For, while the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Mark Rothko

#69. Move decisions out to the Cabinet and agencies. Strengthen them by moving responsibility, authority, and accountability their direction.

Donald Rumsfeld

#70. Political correctness is euphemism for "fear to speak truth to authority

Bangambiki Habyarimana

#71. Civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain ... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.

Harold Laski

#72. The sword has spoke the truth - in authority and wisdom - only the sword O Damascus is certain!

Nizar Qabbani

#73. Sell cigarettes without the proper authority and your body can be destroyed.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

#74. I don't need luck,' said Alex, 'I've got operational authority.' More sensation, laughter and questions. 'Authority to blow stuff up?' one of the freighter crew asked, cheekily. 'This is a warship,' Alex responded, without emotion. 'Authority to blow stuff up is in the definition.' Then,

S.J. MacDonald

#75. I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.

Robert Redford

#76. This emerges clearly in the gospels, where Jesus's "authority" consists both in healing power and in a different kind of teaching, all of which the gospel writers - and Jesus himself - understood as part of the breaking-in of God's Kingdom.

N. T. Wright

#77. A father who doesn't show respect to his wife, a parent who is disrespectful to their child's teacher or to the cashier in the store must come to expect disrespect from his own child as that is what he has learnt is acceptable behavior by the figures in authority in his life.

David Abudram

#78. The price of maintaining membership in the establishment is unquestioning acceptance of authority.

Neil Postman

#79. Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character.

Robert E.Lee

#80. There are four chief obstacles in grasping truth ... namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and the concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge.

Roger Bacon

#81. Women with power and authority tend to intimidate people far more than men with the same qualities, particularly if those women deserve the position they have achieved.

Helene Tursten

#82. Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

Thomas Hobbes

#83. Before all else, Protestantism is, in its very essence, an appeal from all other authority to the divine authority of Holy Scripture

B. B. Warfield

#84. 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.

Susan Sontag

#85. Certain characteristics about 'Marbury v. Madison' are, I think, indisputable. Marbury was the first Supreme Court decision ever to strike down an act of Congress as unconstitutional. Marbury stands for the authority of the Supreme Court to have and to exercise that power.

Cliff Sloan

#86. When authority is backed up by an immediate physical compulsion, what we are dealing with is not authority proper (i.e. symbolic authority), but simply an agency of brute force.

Slavoj Zizek

#87. Disobedience is essentially a prideful power struggle against someone in authority over us. It can be a parent, a priesthood leader, a teacher, or ultimately God. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position.

Ezra Taft Benson

#88. Influence is not the same as authority. Authority can be abused by influence gives.

Johnny Hunt

#89. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.

Wm. Paul Young

#90. Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual.

Aristotle.

#91. Because reality has no authority there. My imagination controls everything.

Samantha Young

#92. Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.

Charles De Gaulle

#93. I'm not a person who likes authority. I just love the fact that it's up to me, and I go straight to the audience.

Rita Rudner

#94. Much as I venerate the name of Newton, I am not obliged to believe that he was infallible. I see ... with regret that he was liable to err, and that his authority has, perhaps, sometimes even retarded the progress of science.

William P. Young

#95. Authority, reason, experience; on these three, mixed in varying proportions all our knowledge depends.

C.S. Lewis

#96. Even the most honest human in authority often does not have the power to undo the damages that bad people do.

Auliq Ice

#97. Would you really have ... ?" said Julien.
"Almost certainly," I said. "I have deep-seated problems with authority figures."
"But you are one!"
"I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour.

Simon R. Green

#98. As a director myself, you want to have colleagues and collaborators that respect your authority as the director. I'm very comfortable with that, and I've done a lot of work in second unit.

Roman Coppola

#99. Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?

Orson Scott Card

#100. There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.

Stephen Hawking