“When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things.”

—  John Leonard

"Perfect Knowledge in Final Things" (p. 110)
Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things." by John Leonard?
John Leonard photo
John Leonard 42
American critic, writer, and commentator 1939–2008

Related quotes

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge (1866) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/thx1410.txt
1860s
Context: The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature — whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation — Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

Donald J. Trump photo

“When someone is president of the United States the authority is total.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Coronavirus task force press briefing, , quoted by * 2020-04-13

CNN reporter flat-out contradicts Trump to his face when he claims king-like authority

Cody Fenwick

RawStory

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/cnn-reporter-flat-out-contradicts-trump-to-his-face-when-he-claims-king-like-authority/
2020s, 2020, April

Antonio Negri photo

“The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics.”

Antonio Negri book Empire

204
Empire

Thomas Brooks photo

“Books may preach when the author cannot, when the author may not, when the author dares not, yes, and which is more, when the author is not.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Heaven On Earth, 1654

Agatha Christie photo

“I don't pretend to be an author or to know anything about writing. I'm doing this simply because Dr Reilly asked me to, and somehow when Dr Reilly asks you to do a thing you don't like to refuse.”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Amy Leatheran
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

“When Holy Church occasionally hinted that she still considered her authority to be supreme over all nations and superior to the authority of states, men in these times tended to snicker.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 28
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua

Giovanni Gentile photo

“The authority of the State is not subject to negotiation, or compromise, or to divide its terrain with other moral or religious principles that might interfere in consciousness. The authority of the State has force and is true authority if, within consciousness, it is entirely unconditioned.”

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician

Orgini e dottrina del fascismo, Rome: Libreria del Littorio, (1929). Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers (2003) p. 31

George Bernard Shaw photo

“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.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

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.

Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury photo

“I yield to authority. I think the practice of the Court of Chancery for more than one hundred years, and the authority of Judges of very great eminence, establish such a course of practice and such a chain of authority, that I do not think I am at liberty to assume that either the Court or those very learned Judges were in error as to their powers and jurisdiction.”

Hardinge Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury (1823–1921) British politician

Attorney-General v. Marquess of Ailesbury (1887), L. J. (N. S.) 57 Q. B. 89.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“When finally our Constitution was adopted, it contained specific provision that the President and members of the Congress and of state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officials, should be qualified for the discharge of their office by oath or affirmation. By the statute law of the United States, and I doubt not by all States, such oaths are administered by a solemn appeal to God for help in the keeping of their covenants. I scarcely need to refer to the fact that the houses of the Congress, and so far as I know the state legislatures, open their daily sessions with prayer. The foundation of our independence and our Government rests upon our basic religious convictions. Back of the authority of our laws is the authority of the Supreme Judge of the World, to whom we still appeal for their final justification.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Related topics