Authority Quotes

Respect authority while questioning it.

To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.'

The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance

Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority.

I don't get my authority from this preexisting paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people. I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity.

I have never refused to talk to any authorities or give them any information I had.

It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

Lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed.

It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

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

The president overstepped his authority when he asked the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls without obtaining a warrant.

Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know.

When God calls, it has the intensity of a shout and the authority of a summons. When He calls, He secures His own desired results.

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority.

If there is disturbance in the camp, the general's authority is weak. If the banners and flags are shifted about, sedition is afoot. If the officers are angry, it means that the men are weary.

I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas.

When men of talents are punished, authority is strengthened. [Lat., Punitis ingeniis, gliscit auctoritas.]

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man may have authority over others, but he can never have their hearts but by giving his own.

I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.

You must learn to follow privately the Lord's bidding: not to speak empty words, not to adorn yourself, always to obey authority, not to look at a woman with desire, not to be angry and much else.

The right is absolute ... government has no authority to forbid me from owning a firearm ... the debate is not about guns. It is about freedom.

In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.

Wearing a hat confers undeniable authority over those without one.

What gives the Word of God authority is simply the fact that it is the word of God!

Insurgent, he says. Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.

I have been advised by the best medical authority, at my age, not to attempt to give up alcohol.

The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

I believe I'm a better authority than anybody else in America on my own wife. I have never known a person with a stronger sense of right and wrong in my life ever.

Between a man and his wife nothing ought to rule but love. Authority is for children and servants, yet not without sweetness.

Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft let by the nose with gold.

Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks: Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others' books.

Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur. There thou mightst behold the great image of authority-a dog's obeyed in office.

Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute 'shall'?

Well, I must be patient; there is no fettering of authority.

I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

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

Dumbledore raised his finger for silence, a silence which fell as though he had struck Uncle Vernon dumb.

Security is not a license for people in authority to hide the tactics they would never openly admit to using.

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird.

When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for authority, validation, and approval from others, we give our personal power away.

Authority must be respected and chosen wisely.

As I've taught our congregation, within the Christian faith the question of homosexuality is not a question of biblical authority, but biblical interpretation.

Question authority; but, raise your hand first.

[W]e must extend the authority of the Union to the persons of the citizens - the only proper objects of government.

The authority of God is behind the establishing of human authority.

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.