“Obedience unlocks understanding.”

Quantum Mechanics, The Key to Understanding Magnetism, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1977/vleck-lecture.pdf (December 8, 1977)

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 76

As quoted in Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn : Who Settled the State of Pennsylvania, and Founded the City of Philadelphia (1827) by S. C. Stevens, p. 117

The Obedience of A Christian Man (1528)
Context: By grace I understand the favor of God, and also the gifts and working of his Spirit in us; as love, kindness, patience, obedience, mercifulness, despising of worldly things, peace, concord, and such like. If after thou hast heard so many masses, matins, and evensongs, and after thou hast received holy bread, holy water, and the bishop’s blessing, or a cardinal’s or the pope’s, if thou wilt be more kind to thy neighbor, and love him better than before; if thou be more obedient unto thy superiors; more merciful, more ready to forgive wrong; done unto thee, more despisest the world, and more athirst after spiritual things; if after that a priest hath taken orders he be less covetous than before; if a wife, after so many and oft pilgrimages, be more chaste, more obedient unto her husband, more kind to her maids and other servants; if gentlemen, knights, lords, and kings and emperors, after they have said so often daily service with their chaplains, know more of Christ than before, and can better skill to rule their tenants, subjects, and realms christianly than before, and be content with their duties; then do such things increase grace. If not, it is a lie. Whether it be so or no, I report me to experience. If they have any other interpretations of justifying or grace, I pray them to teach it me; for I would gladly learn it.

To Leon Goldensohn, May 17, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 166

Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Context: The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire, [... ]

Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace, 1985, p. 275
Commonly rephrased as: "Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the [U.S.] media."

"Reflections on Magic Squares" in The Monist, Vol. 16 (1906), p. 139

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

Misattributed