Authority Quotes

We are adjured not to burn the candle at both ends.But how many people have verified that physically possible?

~ Idries Shah

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.

~ Madalyn Murray O'hair

I don't care whose son he is. I won't go belly-up like a timid pup. If he's fool enough to take a poke at me, I'll snap the finger clean off that does the poking.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

When making a point, there are 2 types of people who may disagree with you: those who can support their reasons, and the childish ones who are too worried about being told what to do.

~ Criss Jami

A coward's gun is emptied when fear pulls the trigger, and hate is the ammunition of choice.

~ T.f. Hodge

There is no enemy that respect and love will not conquer. The moral authority for survival comes from respect.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established.

~ Ludwig Feuerbach

But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word INTERFERENCE. But Christianity placed at the centre what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer. If its picture were true then no sort of 'treaty with reality' could ever be possible. There was no region even in the innermost depth of one's soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice No Admittance. And that was what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, 'This is my business and mine only.

~ C.s. Lewis

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

There have been many authorities who have asserted that the basis of science lies in counting or measuring, i.e. in the use of mathematics. Neither counting nor measuring can however be the most fundamental processes in our study of the material universe—before you can do either to any purpose you must first select what you propose to count or measure, which presupposes a classification.

~ Roy A. Crowson

I was a rule-follower. I obeyed all forms of authority. I had never before encountered a situation where the authority was clearly wrong and I had to stand up for what was right.

~ Linda Kage

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

~ Thea Harris

...if you're an actor, and you've thought your way into the part, then you're character portrayal will have authority...

~ John Geddes

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.

~ Edward Abbey

If a man exists who is immune to force, even if he's the most blameless anchorite living on top of a column in the middle of the desert, he is beyond government, beyond authority, and cannot be controlled; and that would be intolerable.

~ K.j. Parker

Brent had a love-hate relationship with the Government. He hated what it had become over the years and loved to make an issue about it.

~ Kenneth Eade

Authority that can not be questioned is tyranny Terry Pratchett: A Slip of the Keyboard

~ Hank Quense

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

~ Jon Meacham

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact that you are not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you omniscience—that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will not make you infallible—that an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

~ Ayn Rand

Well, people are like that too. THey create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock... And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself.

~ Agatha Christie

How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away? From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts.

~ Piper Kerman

There is no higher authority.

~ Russell T. Davies

Only a prostitute will trade her valuables for money, so you shouldn't sell your God given ideas and talents for money, because you don't own it in any way but should be by a divine authority.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.

~ Lucy Beckett

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

~ Idries Shah

Showing a lack of self-control is in the same vein granting authority to others: 'Perhaps I need someone else to control me.

~ Criss Jami

I'm of the age and immaturity level that I cannot give you my respect solely because you are older or ranked higher on an imaginary totem pole. I give you my respect because of your actions.

~ Erica Goros

PERCIVAL: Now, who is telling the story?SEVERIN: The camera is telling the story. It's watching everything, and you can't lie to it, or it will know.PERCIVAL: My girl is so clever! No, the camera witnesses the story and records it, but it is outside the story. Like a very tiny god with one big, dark eye.... Which of [the characters] is the authority? Who controls how the story is told? And who is the audience, for whom all these wonderful things are meant?SEVERIN: They are all telling the story to me.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

Yes, Dad collared me before I was even born. Nevertheless, he made me the one in authority of the collar and myself.

~ Jazz Feylynn

I respect you as my king, and I respect you as my father, but I do not respect you as a man!

~ Rebecca Mckinsey

Respect the young and chastise your elders. It's about time the world was set aright.

~ Vera Nazarian

A good general rule is that one should seek to be loved by one’s peers—one’s spouse and one’s friends are the best examples—but beyond that, one should first seek to be respected. Seeking to be loved is almost always destructive to non-peer relationships. Teachers, for example, should seek to be respected by their students, not loved. Likewise parents, when raising their children, should not seek to be loved; they need to do too much that may not elicit love in order to raise good and, ironically, loving children. In the liberal world in America, the roles of parents and teachers shifted from authority figures to peers. The results have not been good for children or for society. When one seeks to be loved by those over whom one must exercise authority, one compromises the values necessary to do a proper job.

~ Dennis Prager

The eyes of such a nation (living godly) shall view a land that stretches afar. Talking about global influence, authority, dignity and respect.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Remain open-minded, even when you believe yourself to be a king among peasants. You never know what blessings can be gained or crises averted just by listening.

~ A.j. Darkholme

In the midst of the ubiquitous dealings with prostituted signs, the thing-poem was capable of opening up the prospect of returning to credible experiences of meaning. It did this by tying language to the gold standard of what things themselves communicate. Where randomness is disabled, authority should shine forth.

~ Peter Sloterdijk

The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. (See Helaman 12:6.) They pit their perceptions of truth against God’s great knowledge, their abilities versus God’s priesthood power, and their accomplishments against His mighty works.

~ Ezra Taft Benson

when you get to the peak, remember the valley exists

~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

...each person is required to ask, 'what is my authority?' - on what do you base your decisions? if it's yourself, then you are without excuse...

~ John Geddes

...authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer...

~ John Geddes

The sign of a good leader is easy to recognize, though it is hardly ever seen. For the greatest leaders are those who share as equals in the trials and struggles, the demands and expectations, the hills and trenches, the laws and punishments placed upon the backs of those governed. A great leader is motivated not by power but by compassion. Therefore he can do nothing but make himself a servant to those whom he rules. Such a leader is unequivocally respected, and loved for loving.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich