quotations about authority
One knows that no letter, fax or email, no matter how courteous, will ever be answered unless there is money to be made, and then only in the private sector. The walling off of all authority from consumer contact is a form of contempt.
FREDERICK FORSYTH
"Dangerous rift is opening up in Britain and it's deeply troubling", Express, November 7, 2015
All leaders require authority to act or to tell other people to act, particularly in the profession of arms. Early on in a leader's career, authority, granted by the institution, is emphasized through one's commission, the Constitution, the U.S. Code, rank, position and orders. Over time, however, good leaders begin to establish their own authority, their personal authority to lead others based on the kind of people they are as well as other factors, such as experience, competence, education, personality, relevance and personal maturity. Institutional authority is always required, but tends to be understated as personal authority builds.
GENE KAMENA
"Moral authority: Internally generated, always tested and fragile", Maxwell-Gunter AFB, May 2, 2014
All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
attributed, Michael Bakunin
Authority and example lead the world.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
attributed, Day's Collacon
You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch-22
All human authority is limited by geography, the ability to exercise power, and time. No one has ever been able to claim universal authority over all things.
JOEY SHAW
All Authority
The mythical authority is at the same time both a product and a creator of a modern individual and the social order. It is not outside the system but a force creating and shaping it from the inside, while also being created by that very same order.
ANDREJA ZEVNIK
"Law", Critical Imaginations in International Relations
I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
God and the State
With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words
Authority is based either upon conventional or natural right, otherwise it becomes usurpation.
CHARLES JOHN SMITH
Synonyms Discriminated
We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Thus can the demi-god Authority
Make us pay down for our offense by weight.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Measure for Measure
Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
For men to be tied and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of judgment, and though there be reason to the contrary not to listen unto it, but to follow like beasts the first in the herd, they know not, nor care not whither, this were brutish.
RICHARD HOOKER
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vol. II
The reason why the simpler sort are moved with authority, is the consciousness of their own ignorance; whereby it cometh to pass that having learned men in admiration, they rather fear to dislike them than know wherefore they should allow and follow their judgments. Contrariwise with them that are skilful authority is much more strong and forcible; because they only are able to discern how just cause there is why to some men's authority so much should be attributed.
RICHARD HOOKER
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, vol. II
The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.
TERRY EAGLETON
Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
Traditional authority is a form of authority based on custom and habit, which has its roots in the distant past and often is religiously sanctioned. Christian fundamentalists, for example, use the Bible to support claims that men should have authority over women--arguing that not only is it divinely ordained, but also that it has been that way "since the time of Adam and Eve." Traditional authority is usually hereditary and based on ascriptive statuses (age, race, sex, religion), and people typically obey those who have it because they always have done so--not because their leadership is especially good, just, or wise.
WILLIAM E. THOMPSON & JOSEPH V. HICKEY
Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology
No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
JOSEPH ADDISON
"The Cruelty of Parental Tyranny"
Ten thousand things there are which we believe merely upon the authority or credit of those who have spoken or written them.
ISAAC WATTS
Logic; or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry After Truth
There is no authority but yourself.
RICK REMENDER
Black Science, No. 1, Nov. 2013