“We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it's easy to lay the blame at their feet. Ultimately, however, we are responsible for choosing the authority figure we defer to. Choosing to defer to one who urges aggression against others still puts the responsibility on us.””

—  Mary Ruwart

Source: Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression, (2003), p. 10

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 "We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it's easy to lay…" by Mary Ruwart?
Mary Ruwart photo
Mary Ruwart 18
American scientist and libertarian activist 1949

Related quotes

Walter Cronkite photo

“We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

UN Address (1999)
Context: We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Time will not wait. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic UN federation.

Kelley Armstrong photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“Deference is the instinctive respect which we pay to the great and good. The unconcious acknowledgement of the superiority or excellence of others.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 108.

Terry Eagleton photo

“We live in a society which on the one hand pressurizes us into the pursuit of instant gratification, and the other hand imposes on whole sectors of the population and endless deferment of fulfillment.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 5, p. 167

Teal Swan photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Steve Keen photo

“You have a voice, which has been perhaps been quiescent on matters economic because you have in the past deferred to the authority of the economist. There is no reason to remain quiet.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 14, There Are Alternatives, p. 313

Kwame Nkrumah photo
Carol Gilligan photo

Related topics