authority Quotes

His mental attitude was compounded of two very simple principles, admirable in themselves but which, by carrying them to extremes, he made almost evil – respect for authority and hatred of revolt against it.

“Loose him and forbear!”

“Perhaps because there are those who believe that authority is all of a piece and that to challenge it anywhere is to threaten it everywhere.”

“We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and cleverness. The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.”

″‘We’d better hurry or we’ll be late for dinner,’ I said, breaking into what Finny called my “West Point stride.” 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.”

“To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster.”

“His voice was full of a ringing authority that I had only really heard once—the night he let me into the garden. He was much more attractive when he was using his status for a purpose.”

“Morally authoritarian movements are attractive to ugly, miserable, talentless people.”

God has given us power and authority over the devil.

“First, we parents have to back up school authority and quit making excuses for our kids when they misbehave.”

″‘Don’t you talk to me that way,’ he says. ‘Don’t you question me. You don’t know anything about my life’.”

“My Island was now peopled, and I thought my self very rich in Subjects; and it was a merry Reflection which I frequently made, How like a King I look’d. First of all, the whole Country was my own meer Property; so that I had an undoubted Right of Dominion. 2dly, My people were perfectly subjected: I was absolute Lord and Law-giver; they all owed their Lives to me, and were ready to lay down their Lives, if there had been Occasion of it, for me. It was remarkable too, we had but three Subjects, and they were of three different Religions. My Man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist: However, I allow’d Liberty of Conscience throughout my Dominions: But this is by the Way.”

“in a little Time I began to speak to him, and teach him to speak to me; and first, I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav’d his Life; I call’d him so for the Memory of the Time; I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my Name; ”

“How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?”

“Besides this, I shard’d the Island into Parts with ‘em, reserv’d to myself the Property of the whole, but gave them such Parts respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the Place, I left them there.”

“Then to see how like a King I din’d too all alone, attended by my Servants, Poll, as if he had been my Favourite, was the only Person permitted to talk to me. My Dog who was no grown very old and crazy, and had found no Species to multiply his Kind upon, sat always at my Right Hand, and two Cats, one on one Side the Table, and one on the other, expecting now and then a Bit from my Hand, as a Mark of Special Favour. ”

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

“It is possible that I appear to you a powerful person. I wear a uniform, I have a certain authority over those under me. But I am in prison, dear lady from Haarlem, a prison stronger than this one.”

“As a council of state, and as a court of justice, the senate possessed very considerable prerogatives; but in its legislative capacity, in which it was supposed virtually to represent the people, the rights of sovereignty were acknowledged to reside in that assembly. Every power was derived from their authority, every law was ratified by their sanction.”

“Without any violation of the principles of the constitution, the general of the Roman armies might receive and exercise an authority almost despotic over the soldiers, the enemies, and the subjects of the republic.”

“Ivan Ilych was...a capable, cheerful, good-natured, and sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of what he considered to be his duty: and he considered his duty to be what was so considered by those in authority.”

“The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”

“This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification.”

“Where there is an authority, a power on earth, from which relief can be had by appeal, there the continuance of the state of war is excluded, and the controversy is decided by that power.”

“Age or virtue may give men a just precedency.”

“Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one.”

“Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, th’ austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ th’ state Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. ”

“Be you content, fair maid. It is the law, not I, condemn your brother. Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son, It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow. ”

“The moment the people is legitimately assembled as a sovereign body, the jurisdiction of the government wholly lapses.”

“The wise ones serve on the higher, but rule on the lower. They obey the laws coming from above them, but en their own plane, and those below them, they rule and give orders.”

“All human authority, however organized, must have confined limits, or insolence and oppression will prove the offspring of its grandeur, and the difficulty or rather impossibility of escape prevents resistance.”

“The regime is an arrangement of a city with respect to its offices, particularly the one that has authority over all matters.”

“As to that, sir, I swore an oath before the altar of God to protect this woman. And if you’re tellin’ me that ye consider your own authority to be greater that that of the Almighty, then I must inform ye that I’m no of that opinion, myself.”

“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”

“Nguyen was by now thoroughly spooked. Artemis generally had that effect on people. A pale adolescent speaking with the authority and vocabulary of a powerful adult. Nguyen had heard the name Fowl before—who hadn’t in the international underworld?—but he’d assumed he’d be dealing with Artemis senior, not this boy. Though the word “boy” hardly seemed to do this gaunt individual justice.”

That being said, Hamish drew more of my attention during this read-through. His parents are away an awful lot which goes some way to explaining his acting out in the classroom and general disregard for authority. He is probably the brightest child in Class Three but needs a proper challenge.

“The police, the Home Guard, in fact everybody in authority in Garmouth, knew the gun had been stolen. They were pretty sure the boys had it, but where?”

She governed her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass. All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.

“You—know—nothing. Of course you know nothing,” said Mr Alleyne. “Tell me,” he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside him, “do you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?” The man glanced from the lady’s face to the little egg-shaped head and back again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found a felicitous moment: “I don’t think, sir,” he said, “that that’s a fair question to put to me.” There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was astounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and Miss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly.

“He was the only man that could keep that bag of cats in order. ‘Down, ye dogs! Lie down, ye curs!’ That’s the way he treated them.”

He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street corners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs Kearney who arranged everything.

As Mr Holohan was a novice in such delicate matters as the wording of bills and the disposing of items for a programme, Mrs Kearney helped him. She had tact. She knew what artistes should go into capitals and what artistes should go into small type. She knew that the first tenor would not like to come on after Mr Meade’s comic turn. To keep the audience continually diverted she slipped the doubtful items in between the old favourites. Mr Holohan called to see her every day to have her advice on some point. She was invariably friendly and advising—homely, in fact. She pushed the decanter towards him, saying: “Now, help yourself, Mr Holohan!”

Guests at the Red House were allowed to do what they liked within reason—the reasonableness or otherwise of it being decided by Mark. But when once they (or Mark) had made up their minds as to what they wanted to do, the plan had to be kept.

“You don’t go to school to criticize the master.”

The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world.

“Why demand permission ere you enter? Are you no longer my master, or have I ceased to be your slave?”

The name of father is sacred in two senses; he should be reverenced as the author of our being and as a master whom we ought to obey.

“And over this great demesne Buck ruled. Here he was born, and here he had lived the four years of his life. It was true, there were other dogs, There could not but be other dogs on so vast a place, but they did not count.”

“Among the terriers he stalked imperiously, and Toots and Ysabel he utterly ignored, for he was king, — king over all creeping, crawling, flying things of Judge Miller’s place, humans included.”

“Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own.”

The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.

“They don’t mind what they ask of me, the subordinate; but you’ll never catch ‘em asking any questions of my principal.”

“I’m speaking here on behalf of your parents and of your employer, and really must request a clear and immediate explanation. I am astonished, quite astonished. I thought I knew you as a calm and sensible person, and now you suddenly seem to be showing off with peculiar whims.”

“Mother, mother”, said Gregor gently, looking up at her. He had completely forgotten the chief clerk for the moment, but could not help himself snapping in the air with his jaws at the sight of the flow of coffee. That set his mother screaming anew, she fled from the table and into the arms of his father as he rushed towards her. Gregor, though, had no time to spare for his parents now; the chief clerk had already reached the stairs; with his chin on the banister, he looked back for the last time. Gregor made a run for him; he wanted to be sure of reaching him; the chief clerk must have expected something, as he leapt down several steps at once and disappeared; his shouts resounding all around the staircase. The flight of the chief clerk seemed, unfortunately, to put Gregor’s father into a panic as well. Until then he had been relatively self controlled, but now, instead of running after the chief clerk himself, or at least not impeding Gregor as he ran after him, Gregor’s father seized the chief clerk’s stick in his right hand (the chief clerk had left it behind on a chair, along with his hat and overcoat), picked up a large newspaper from the table with his left, and used them to drive Gregor back into his room, stamping his foot at him as he went. Gregor’s appeals to his father were of no help, his appeals were simply not understood, however much he humbly turned his head his father merely stamped his foot all the harder.

Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism and that’s just what they relish!