“In eras when authority or at least specific authorities have been questioned, there is more tendency to examine the roots of and the need for authority. The owl of Minerva flies not in the dusk but in the storm.”

Source: 'The Owl and the Bulldog: Reflections on Conservatism and Foreign Policy', Twentieth Century, Volume 155 (1954), p. 107
Context: Speaking for Conservatism, Hegel was right. And nothing proves it better than the post-war crop of Tory intellectuals, sprouting like mushrooms in the damp cellars of Abbey House. Not until the stimuli which originally conditioned Conservative reflexes have finally disappeared can the intellectual emerge to provide a rationale for Conservative behaviour. So Conservative theory must always base itself on some form of historical restorationism. The moderate seeks the world of Joseph Chamberlain—or if he is daring, of Disraeli. The really advanced radical looks still further back, to Prince Rupert, or the Middle Ages, particularly if he is a Catholic.

Heaven On Earth, 1654

As quoted in "A conversation with Garth Nix" by Claire E. White at Writers Write (July-August 2000) http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jul00/nix.htm
Context: I don't believe authors need to keep any specific values or ideas in mind while they are writing for children, but I do think authors need to be aware of their audience, and of the effect their work may have. So if they want to address particularly sensitive topics or taboos, they have to do so consciously and carefully. This is very different to toeing a particular moral line or leaving things out.
Certainly I don't think good always has to triumph over evil; it depends on the story and the aims of the book. For example, I could envisage telling a story where the inaction of people leads to the triumph of evil. But I would include the hope that this would lead to the people involved doing better next time. Is that story then really about the triumph of evil, or is it about the awakening of opposition to evil?

Afterword, p. 190
1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 31
Context: How much could I tell them? How much dared I tell them? What was the point at which acceptance would begin to yield to doubt? For the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all. Had I been a Christian, I would undoubtedly have been considered a heretic, for what the world has always needed is more heretics and less authority. There can be no order or progress without discipline, but authority can be quite different. Authority, in this world in which I moved, implied belief in and acceptance of a dogma, and dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition. The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside.  Each generation has a group that wishes to impose a static pattern on events, a static pattern that would hold society forever immobile in a position favorable to the group in question. <!--
Much of the conflict in the minds and arguments of those about me was due to a basic conflict between religious doctrines based primarily upon faith, and Greek philosophy, which was an attempt to interpret experience by reason. Or so it seemed to me, a man with much to learn.

Authority and persuasion in philosophy (1985)

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Preface to the 1913 edition
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)
Context: I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self. In the case of a work which is a mere exhibition of skill in conventional art, there may be some excuse for the delusion that the longer the artist works on it the nearer he will bring it to perfection. Yet even the victims of this delusion must see that there is an age limit to the process, and that though a man of forty-five may improve the workmanship of a man of thirty-five, it does not follow that a man of fifty-five can do the same.
When we come to creative art, to the living word of a man delivering a message to his own time, it is clear that any attempt to alter this later on is simply fraud and forgery. As I read the old Quintessence of Ibsenism I may find things that I see now at a different angle, or correlate with so many things then unnoted by me that they take on a different aspect. But though this may be a reason for writing another book, it is not a reason for altering an existing one.

Timothy Leary's track on Sound Bites from the Counter Culture (1989)