Authority Quotes
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When governments claim to derive their authority from any source other than the governed, it always leads to the destruction of liberty.
G. Edward Griffin
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Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.
Herbert Spencer
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The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.
John Stuart Mill
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Not only do most people accept violence if it is perpetuated by legitimate authority, they also regard violence against certain kinds of people as inherently legitimate, no matter who commits it.
Edgar Friedenberg
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Organisation, far from creating authority, is the only cure for it and the only means whereby each of us will get used to taking an active and conscious part in collective work, and cease being passive instruments in the hands of leaders.
Errico Malatesta
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Note that an informed source need not fit our general stereotype of an “authority”—and a person who fits our stereotype of an authority may not even be an informed source.
Anthony Weston
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Authority is the assumption that someone else knows better than you.
James Cromwell
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It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the authority of man, as divinely ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of kings and Popes, as divinely ordained.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His lordship.
Elisabeth Elliot
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Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities
David Landes
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Hinduism does not rest on the authority of one book or one prophet, nor does it posses a common creed like the Kalma.
Mahatma Gandhi
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My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.
William the Silent
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Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone - that of the state. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master - the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course.
Bertrand de Jouvenel
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
Allen Tate
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The Authority has the power to turn everyone against me, and they have.
Nikki Bella
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A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn't ability that counts, but authority.
Barry Hughart
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If I was not assured by the best authority on earth that the world is to be destroyed by fire, I should conclude that the day of destruction is at hand, but brought on by means of an agent very opposite to that of heat.
Lewis Carroll
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Looking back I realize I had the perfect family background to become the political cartoonist that I became. My father was stupid, insensitive, and cruel, thereby making me distrustful of all authority. On the other hand, I had a warm, supportive and encouraging mother, which made me want to fix the world.
Edward Sorel
