Quotes about authority (2823 quotes, page 22)

“The sources of authority in America are the final interpreters of Americanism. These are the legislature and the court. Every other Americanization achievement stands or falls finally according to the way equity is maintained among men. The administration of justice is the determining factor in men's lives, whether they turn to or from America. It is for the court to make clear the difference between liberty and license, and at the same time assure to each man alike the right to free speech. Let inequalities appear and Americanization is defeated. It is for the court to impose duties while it makes clear the opportunities, and to see that duties and privileges are alike the heritage of all free men. Free education is placed at the disposal of all people in America, but it is the duty of all to maintain and extend its benefits. It is well to set the immigrant in the pursuit of liberty and happiness when he lands here, but without safeguards against exploitation he can scarcely be blamed if he concludes that such liberty is a delusion of American minds.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men , People , Education , Justice

“When passing on a spiritual tradition, therefore, we must be wary of the scholastic approach, sometimes misnamed ‘scientific’ or wissenschaftlisches, which, when employed in matters pertaining to the Spirit, is no more than one’s self-diffidence boosted by the authority of secondary sources. What matters is not my knowledge of what they say about mindfulness, but the fruit, which my own humble struggle to practice it, produces in me for my benefit and for the benefit of others.”

Aloysius Pieris (1934) Sri Lankan Jesuit priest

Source: "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches", p. 38

Knowledge

“An illustrator in my own mind — and this is not a truth of any kind — is someone who so falls in love with writing that he wishes he had written it, and the closest he can get to is illustrating it. And the next thing you learn, you have to find something unique in this book, which perhaps even the author was not entirely aware of. And that’s what you hold on to, and that’s what you add to the pictures: a whole Other Story that you believe in, that you think is there.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Quoted in an interview, "Sendak on Sendak," Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia (2007/2008)

Love , Truth , Books , Thinking

“The work deserved its success for its own merits, for despite the narration of many marvellous sights, the author remained urbane and tolerant. He was a superb storyteller with a vivid imagination, who was able to combine the novel with the familiar, and moral exhortation with entertainment.”

John Mandeville (1300–1372) writer

N. F. Blake, in Whitney F. Bolton (ed.) The Middle Ages (London: Sphere, 1970) p. 381.
Criticism

Imagination , Success

“Navy Department, Washington, Sept. 16, 1879.
General Order: The Acting Secretary of the Navy announces, with regret, to the Navy and Marine Corps, the death of Rear-Admiral Charles Boarman, on the 13th instant, at his home in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and after an honorable service of over sixty-eight years. Rear-Admiral Boarman entered the Navy, June 9, 1811, and at the time of his death had been longer in the service than any other Officer borne on the Navy Register. He was a participant in the War of 1812, and during his long career in the Navy had many important commands. On March 4, 1879, he was promoted from a Commodore to a Rear-Admiral on the retired list, from August 15, 1876, under the law authorizing such promotion, where an officer, being at the outbreak of the Rebellion, a citizen of a State engaged in such rebellion, exhibited marked fidelity to the Union in adhering to the flag of the United States. In respect to his memory it is hereby ordered, that, on the day after the receipt hereof, the flags of the Navy Yards and Stations, and vessels in commission, be displayed at half mast, from sunrise to sunset, and thirteen minute guns be fired at noon from the Navy Yards and Stations, flagships, and vessels acting singly.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

William N. Jeffers, Acting Secretary of the Navy 1879
Historical Records and Studies, Vol. VI (1911)

Death , War , Age , Law

“All executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government are authorized and directed to cooperate with the Committee in its work, and to furnish the Committee such information or the services of such persons as the Committee may require in the performance of its duties.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Executive Order 9981 (1948)

Personality

“But it is recognized that punishment for the abuse of the liberty accorded to the press is essential to the protection of the public, and that the common law rules that subject the libeler to responsibility for the public offense, as well as for the private injury, are not abolished by the protection extended in our constitutions. The law of criminal libel rests upon that secure foundation. There is also the conceded authority of courts to punish for contempt when publications directly tend to prevent the proper discharge of judicial functions.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Law

“Follett was always preoccupied with the dynamic view of organization, with the thing in process, so to speak. Authority, Power, Leadership, the Giving of Orders, Conflict, Conciliation — all her keywords are active words. There is a static or structural approach to the problem of organization which has its value; but those who are most convinced of the importance of such structural analysis would be the first to admit that it is only a step on the journey, an instrument of thought; it is not and cannot be complete in itself; it is only the anatomy of the subject. As in medicine, the study of anatomy may be an essential discipline, but it is in the physiology and psychology of the individual patient that that discipline finds its working justification.
Thus the four principles which she finally arrived at to express her view of organization were all active principles. In her own words, they are:
"1. Co-ordination by direct contact of the responsible people concerned.
2. Co-ordination in the early stages.
3. Co-ordination as a reciprocal relating of all the features in a situation.
4. Co-ordination as a continuing process."”

Henry C. Metcalf (1867–1942) American business theorist

Since these principles are carefully explained and illustrated by Miss Follett herself in the final paper in this volume, we must content ourselves here with merely this concise statement of them.
Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxvi

People , Problem , Study

“Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate.”

Washington Irving book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

"Westminster Abbey".
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)

Men , History

“The Bible was very definitely written by men, and not superior men either; far from it! This is why so much of it can be shown to be historically and scientifically dead wrong about damned-near everything back-to-front. We’re talking about people who believe snakes and donkeys can talk, who believe in incantations, blood sacrifice, ritual spells, enchanted artifacts, pyrotechnic potions, astrology, and the five elements of witchcraft. They thought that if you use a magic wand to sprinkle blood all over someone, it will cure them of leprosy. We’re talking about people who think that rabbits chew cud, and that bats are birds, and whales are fish, and that π is a round number. These folks believed that if you display striped patterns to a pregnant cow, it would bare striped calves. How could anyone say that who knows anything about genetics? Obviously the authors of this book didn’t.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"2nd Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrkjEgUDZA&list=PL126AFB53A6F002CC&index=2, Youtube (November 24, 2007)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Men , People , Books , Bird

“Where justice and authority let victims down, solidarity, activism, and a massive effort to create awareness will have to fill the breach.”

Sarah Seltzer

Cop rapes woman at gunpoint, 11-year-old rape victim smeared, accuser sued for $2 million: is US society failing victims? http://www.alternet.org/story/152140/cop_rapes_woman_at_gunpoint,_11-year-old_rape_victim_smeared,_accuser_sued_for_$2_million:_is_us_society_failing_victims?, Alternet (August 23, 2011).

Justice , Effort

“In the religious traditions of the Hindus, the most important author of sacred texts is Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa. He is traditionally credited with the arrangement of the Veda into four texts as well as the composition of the epic Mahbharata (Mbh), many Puranas, and other works. Vyasa, however, has been described as mythical as his existence is impossible to prove except in myths and legends such as are preserved in the epic.”

Vyasa central and revered figure in most Hindu traditions

In p. 1.
Sources, Seer of the Fifth Veda: Kr̥ṣṇa Dvaipāyana Vyāsa in the Mahābhārata

“There is no authority for God’s existence except the inward conviction that is born of mystical experience.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.72

God

“Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Twelve, "Culture Jamming"

School , Religion , Nature , Rage

“The informative phase refers to those things which authority should know in framing its decisions; the advisory, to the actual counsel based on such information; the supervisory, to both preceding phases as applied to all the details of execution. The point is that the line represents the authority of man; the staff, the authority of ideas. The staff is purely an auxiliary service. Its function is to be informative and advisory with respect to both plans and their execution. This is implicit in the word "staff" which is something to support or lean upon but without authority to decide or initiate.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 60

Idea , Support , Decision

“Rarely do we hear that Iraq has never committed any aggression against the United States. No one in the media questions our aggression against Iraq for the past 12 years by continuous bombing and imposed sanctions responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. […] Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result. It is immoral and unjust, because it has nothing to do with US security and because Iraq has not initiated aggression against us. We must understand that the American people become less secure when we risk a major conflict driven by commercial interests and not constitutionally authorized by Congress. Victory under these circumstances is always elusive, and unintended consequences are inevitable”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Before We Bomb Iraq http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2002/cr022602.htm (February 26, 2002).
2000s, 2001-2005

Death , War , Children , People

“Justice can be peaceably and effectually administered there only where there is recognised authority and adequate power.”

Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale (1783–1851) British lawyer

Duke of Brunswick v. Bang of Hanover (1844), 6 Beav. 49.
Quote

Justice

“Having been selected to be an author in the World Book, I now believe that Wikipedia is a perfectly fine source for your information, because I know what the quality control is for real encyclopedias — they let me in.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

Books , World

“Our moral ideas are not transcendent, our moral ideas are historical and History obeys to changing Aions, we feel that ours is fading and no authority can enforce confidence rooted in what no power includes : in Sensibility itself. To every Aion a new Sensibility adheres and to each Sensibility another Aion is related, sin is nowhere, we only see abuse and worst among abuses, the delusion of sin as such.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Ma confession, Lausanne: L'Âge d'Homme, p. 92
Ma confession (1975)

Feeling , Confidence , History , Idea

“What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues, not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter V, TRANSFORMATION, p. 160.

Religion , Hope

“The aim of the scholarly editor is not to produce the the easiest text for the reader, but to get as near as he can to the text of the author.”

Frederic G. Kenyon (1863–1952) British palaeographer and biblical and classical scholar

Source: The Story Of The Bible, Chapter X, The Position Today, p. 142

“Legendary in the Wikipedia world, Wadewitz had more than 50,000 'edits' or contributions to her credit. She also was the author of 36 'featured' articles, the highest distinction bestowed by other Wikipedians based on accuracy, fairness, style and comprehensiveness.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Woo, Elaine (April 23, 2014). "Adrianne Wadewitz dies at 37; helped diversify Wikipedia" http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-adrianne-wadewitz-20140424,0,1077455.story. Los Angeles Times.
About

World

“My whole concept of economics is based on the idea that we have to explain how prices operate as signals, telling people what they ought to do in particular circumstances. The approach to this problem has been blocked by a cost or labor theory of value, which assumes that prices are determined by the technical conditions of production only. The important question is to explain how the interaction of a great number of people, each possessing only limited knowledge, will bring about an order that could only be achieved by deliberate direction taken by somebody who has the combined knowledge of all these individuals. However, central planning cannot take direct account of particular circumstances of time and place. Additionally, every individual has important bits of information which cannot possibly be conveyed to a central authority in statistical form. In a system in which the knowledge of relevant data is dispersed among millions of agents, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different individuals.
Given this context, it is intellectually not satisfactory to attempt to establish causal relations between aggregates or averages in the manner in which the discipline of macroeconomics has attempted to do. Individuals do not make decisions on the basis of partial knowledge of magnitudes such as the total amount of production, or the total quantity of money. Aggregative theorizing leads nowhere.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Money , People , Idea , Question

“The main purpose of this book is the development of a new method for the semantical analysis of meaning, that is, a new method for analyzing and describing the meanings of linguistic expressions. This method, called the method of extension and intension, is developed by modifying and extending certain customary concepts, especially those of class and property. The method will be contrasted with various other semantical methods used in traditional philosophy or by contemporary authors.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Meaning And Necessity (1947), p. v: Preface

Books

“For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you're under audit. So you've got to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax. So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statements, they don't give you the tax rate. They don't give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he's ever going to release his tax returns, because there's something he's hiding.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

People , Health , School , Business

“Although there is no study which presents so simple a beginning as that of geometry, there is none in which difficulties grow more rapidly as we proceed, and what may appear at first rather paradoxical, the more acute the student the more serious will the impediments in the way of his progress appear. This necessarily follows in a science which consists of reasoning from the very commencement, for it is evident that every student will feel a claim to have his objections answered, not by authority, but by argument, and that the intelligent student will perceive more readily than another the force of an objection and the obscurity arising from an unexplained difficulty, as the greater is the ordinary light the more will occasional darkness be felt. To remove some of these difficulties is the principal object of this Treatise.”

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871) British mathematician, philosopher and university teacher (1806-1871)

Source: On the Study and Difficulties of Mathematics (1831), Ch. I.

Way , Feeling , Intelligence , Study

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this.
"Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015)
Lectures

Children , People , Pleasure , World

“We economists love to quote Keynes’s final lines in his 1936 General Theory—for the reason that they cater so well to our vanity and self-importance. But to admit the truth, madmen in authority can self generate their own frenzies without needing help from either defunct or avant-garde economists. What establishment economists brew up is as often what the Prince and the Public are already wanting to imbibe. We guys don’t stay in the best club by proffering the views of some past academic crank or academic sage.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Coeditor's Forword in Inside the economist’s mind: conversations with eminent economists (2007)
New millennium

Love , Truth , Guy , Quotes

“At Mondorf and Nuremberg, Goering had undergone a systematic withdrawal cure which had ended his drug addiction. Ever since, he was in better form than I had ever seen him. He displayed remarkable energy and became the most formidable personality among the defendants. I thought it a great pity that he had not been up to this level before the outbreak of the war and in critical situations during the war. He would have been the only person whose authority and popularity Hitler would have had to reckon with. Actually, he had been one of the few sensible enough to foresee the doom that awaited us. But having thrown away his chance to save the country while that was still possible, it was absurd and truly criminal for him to use his regained powers to hoodwink his own people. His whole policy was one of deception. Once, in the prison yard something was said about Jewish survivors in Hungary. Goering remarked coldly: "So, there are still some there? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again."”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

I was stunned.
Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 512

War , People , Chance , Personality

“A well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can’t buy that because the word doesn’t exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 145.

Time

“While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.”

Alfred Jules Ayer (1910–1989) English philosopher

"The Meaning of Life".
The Meaning of Life and Other Essays (1990)

“Very few people, including authors willing to commit to paper, ever really read primary sources—certainly not in necessary depth and comtemplation, and often not at all. […] When writers close themselves off to the documents of scholarship, and then rely only on seeing or asking, they become conduits and sieves rather than thinkers. When, on the other hand, you study the great works of predecessors engaged in the same struggle, you enter a dialogue with human history and the rich variety of our own intellectual traditions. You insert yourself, and your own organizing powers, into this history—and you become an acive agent, not merely a “reporter.””

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Introduction, p. 6
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

People , History , Study , Reading

“The supreme coordinating authority must rest somewhere and in some form in every organization, else there could be no such thing as organized.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 20

“The wise executive never looks upon organizational lines as being settled once and for all. He knows that a vital organization must keep growing and changing with the result that its structure must remain malleable. Get the best organization structure you can devise, but do not be afraid to change it for good reason: This seems to be the sound rule. On the other hand, beware of needless change, which will only result in upsetting and frustrating your employees until they become uncertain as to what their lines of authority actually are.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 168; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 408

Change

“We should fully understand our religion. Fighting is a part of our religion and our Shari'a. Those who love God and his Prophet and this religion cannot deny that. Whoever denies even a minor tenet of our religion commits the gravest sin in Islam. Those who sympathize with the infidels-such as the PLO in Palestine or the so-called Palestinian Authority--have been trying for tens of years to get back some of their rights. They laid down arms and abandoned what is called violence and tried peaceful bargaining. What did the Jews give them? They did not give them even 1% of their rights.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'But there are many Muslims who do not agree with your kind of violence.'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

Love , God , Peace , Religion

“The government of the Israelites was a Federation, held together by no political authority, but by the unity of… faith and founded not on physical force but on a voluntary covenant. The principle of self-government was carried out not only in each tribe, but in every group of at least 120 families; and there was neither privilege of rank nor inequality before the law. Monarchy was so alien to the primitive spirit of the community that it was resisted by Samuel… The throne was erected on a compact; and the king was deprived of the right of legislation among a people that recognised no lawgiver but God, whose highest aim in politics was to… make its government conform to the ideal type that was hallowed by the sanctions of heaven. The inspired men who rose in unfailing succession to prophesy against the usurper and the tyrant, constantly proclaimed that the laws, which were divine, were paramount over sinful rulers, and appealed… to the healing forces that slept in the uncorrupted consciences of the masses. Thus the… Hebrew nation laid down the parallel lines on which all freedom has been won—the doctrine of national tradition and the doctrine of the higher law; the principle that a constitution grows from a root, by process of development… and the principle that all political authorities must be tested and reformed according to a code which was not made by man. The operation of these principles… occupies the whole of the space we are going over together.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

Source: The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Men , God , People , Family

“The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

"Civil Disobedience".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

World

“The recognition of authority to impose previous restraint upon publication in order to protect the community against the circulation of charges of misconduct, and especially of official misconduct, necessarily would carry with it the admission of the authority of the censor against which the constitutional barrier was erected. The preliminary freedom, by virtue of the very reason for its existence, does not depend, as this Court has said, on proof of truth.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Truth , Communication , Freedom , Dependency

“Nothing builds authority up like silence, splendor of the strong and shelter of the weak.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Rien ne rehausse l'autorité mieux que le silence, splendeur des forts et refuge des faibles.
in Le Fil de l'épée.
Writings

Strong , Silence

“The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe."”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12
Essais (1595), Book II

Wisdom , Men , God , People

“So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.”

Stanislav Andreski (1919–2007) Polish-British sociologist

Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972)

World , Nature , Knowledge , Thinking

“In the end theologians are jealous of science, for they are aware that it has greater authority than do their own ways of finding “truth”: dogma, authority, and revelation. Science does find truth, faith does not.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" William Lane Craig defends his ridiculous claim that animals don’t suffer http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/william-lane-craig-defends-his-ridiculous-claim-that-animals-dont-suffer/" February 9, 2013

Truth , Faith , Way , Science

“The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

Love , Truth , Feeling , Problem

“[Lloyd George] was still pessimistic about the war—said we were fighting better brains than our own—that there was not one really first-class man on our side. The Germans had shown that they had better training than we, and he knew the value of training—he had seen examples of it in the House of Commons, when Labour members competed against men of better education than themselves—they were just as good fellows, but they hadn't the training. And [Lloyd George] says that it is training that is wanting on our side—among the generals. He says our soldiers are the best in Europe, but they are being wantonly sacrificed because those in authority do not know how to make the best use of them.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Frances Stevenson's diary entry (16 December 1914), A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 17
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men , War , Education , Fight

“To fix the fluctuating mass of theories, no man has suggested any other expedient than the construction of some new theory, to whose authority… all persons shall submit. The remedy is constantly augmenting the disease.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Lecture I. §4.
A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)

Disease , Personality

“Consequently, it became necessary for the rulers of Islam (the Caliphs) to follow the policy of Iranian Emperors in order to ensure the greatness of True Word, the supremacy of the Muslim religion… overthrow of the enemies of the Faith… and maintenance of their own authority.”

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Fatawa-i-Jahandari, p.39. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Faith , Religion

“In writing what he does not speak, what he would never say and, in truth, would probably never even think, the author of the written speech is already entrenched in the posture of the sophist; the man of non-presence and non-truth. Writing is thus already on the scene. The incompatibility between written and the trueis clearly announced at the moment Socrates starts to recount the way in which men are carried out themselves by pleasure, become absent from themselves, forget themselves and die in the thrill of song.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Plato's Pharmacy, Pharmacia
Dissemination (1972)

Men , Pleasure , Truth , Way

“Each of the laws listed in the collection commonly and erroneously referred to as ‘The Ten Commandments’ were either already universal ordinances everywhere, adapted from Hammurabi’s stele of law from centuries earlier, or have no parallel in American jurisprudence. The laws of Moses are NOT our laws! The founding fathers made clear who their influences really were, and that their goal was a system of government directly opposed to everything Mosaic law or governance represented. To say that the Constitution was in any way inspired by any covenant between God and Moses is no less a lie than to say that America was founded on Biblical principles -which our textbooks also say. There is no truth in either of these statements. They were inserted to revise our history according to an overt agenda to instill and perpetuate conservative Christian authority. This is a major front of the fundamentalist Christian “culture wars” against honest, factual reality. There is no defense of these errors and no justification for imposing them as part of ‘education’. Our textbooks are demonstrably false and deliberately misleading, and they must be corrected.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Correct Texas' textbooks!" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/01/correct-texas-textbooks/, Patheos (November 1, 2015)
Patheos

God , War , Truth , Lie

“But some years after, a letter, which he received from Dr. Hooke, put him on inquiring what was the real figure, in which a body let fall from any high place descends, taking the motion of the earth round its axis into consideration. Such a body, having the same motion, which by the revolution of the earth the place has whence it falls, is to be considered as projected forward and at the same time drawn down to the centre of the earth. This gave occasion to his resuming his former thoughts concerning the moon, and Picard in France having lately measured the earth, by using his measures the moon appeared to be kept in her orbit purely by the power of gravity; and consequently, that this power decreases, as you recede from the centre of the earth, in the manner our author had formerly conjectured. Upon this principle he found the line described by a falling body to be an ellipsis, the centie of the earth being one focus. And the primary planets moving in such orbits round the sun, he had the satisfaction to see, that this inquiry, which he had undertaken merely out of curiosity, could be applied to the greatest purposes. Hereupon he composed near a dozen propositions, relating to the motion of the primary planets about the sun. Several years after this, some discourse he had with Dr. Halley, who at Cambridge made him a visit, engaged Sir Isaac Newton to resume again the consideration of this subject; and gave occasion to his writing the treatise, which he published under the title of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This treatise, full of such a variety of profound inventions, was composed by him, from scarce any other materials than the few propositions before mentioned, in the space of a year and a half.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 519
Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Appearance , Time , Sun

“Sirs, I address this warning to you, the aristocracy of industry in this city, because, like all aristocracies, you tend to grow blind in long authority, and to be unaware that you and your class and its every action are being considered and judged day by day by those who have power to shake or overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty today is making our industrial civilisation stir like a quaking bog. You do not seem to realise that your assumption that you are answerable to yourselves alone for your actions in the industries you control is one that becomes less and less tolerable in a world so crowded with necessitous life.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

Open letter to the Masters of Dublin (1913)

Life , World

“The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Sir Thomas Browne (1756) http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/browne.html

Life

“There,' I said to a friend, 'lies the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know; he was just to all men, and his heart was full to overflowing with kindness toward those who accomplished his death.' I have been satisfied that the persons who called at the Malvern were some of the assassins who would have killed him there if they could have got on board, and they could easily have escaped in the confusion by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore, which was not more than twenty yards distant. More-over, I do not think that the prime instigator of the deed was ever suspected, though I have my own opinion on the subject, as also had Senator Nye, that stanch old patriot who held, in the latter part of the war, a position somewhat analogous to that of a minister of police, or was in consultation, by the wish of President Lincoln, with the police authorities of our great cities. He picked up many interesting incidents in relation to the President's assassination which he talked about freely to me; but he was a prudent man, and a politician, and did not desire to raise questions which might affect his personal interests in the future.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 319–320

Death , Men , War , Question

“One Australian tradition is to cut down the elite and the successful. It had its roots in the era of convicts who naturally opposed those in authority. This levelling or egalitarian tradition continued to flourish on the goldfields in the 1850s when the unusual mining laws gave everyone an opportunity to find gold, and the tradition was accentuated around 1900 by the rising trade unions. The attitude was one of the spurs to Australian democracy.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

Law , Democracy , Nature , Success

“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

C'est un métier que de faire un livre, comme de faire une pendule: il faut plus que de l'esprit pour être auteur.
Aphorism 3; Variant translation: It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Books

“Sadly, many Christians openly embrace big bang cosmology (that the universe essentially created itself) but argue that God is the one who started the process. But this means that God really didn’t do much and was distant from His creation, which is not the way the God of the Bible says He created (this idea also has many other problems as mentioned earlier). But what many of these Christians don’t realize is that the big bang is not just a story about the past—it’s also a story about the future. As this news article reminds us, when scientists start with the presupposition that nature is all that there is and time will eventually take its course on the universe, they are left with bleak predictions. And the prediction of those who believe in the big bang is that the universe will slowly run out of energy and, eventually, became “cold, dark, and desolate.” This does not match with the future described in God’s Word! So what do Christians who have accepted the big bang do? If they (as many do) embrace the secular scientists’ ideas about the past (i. e., the big bang cosmology), then will they also embrace the rest of the secularist belief concerning the heat death in the future? The Christians I’ve met who have compromised God’s Word with the big bang concerning origins don’t accept the rest of the big bang idea concerning the future. Frankly, they are so inconsistent! This highlights why Christians shouldn’t pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to accept and which ones we will reinterpret to fit fallible man’s ideas. If so, then man is really being an authority over God! This is back-to-front! We need to believe all of God’s Word from the very beginning.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

The Universe Is “Dying” and It’s Because of Sin https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2015/08/20/universe-dying-and-its-because-sin/, Around the World with Ken Ham (August 20, 2015)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Death , God , Way , Idea

“If one assumes, as I do, that battery is caused by the belief permeating this culture that hierarchical rule and coercive authority are natural, then all our relationships tend to be based on power and domination, and thus all forms of battery are linked.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

Nature

“Importantly, there is nothing in the Constitution — by which, under Article 6, Section 2, officials at every level of government are obligated to abide — that authorizes the banning of any substance or enforcing that ban with the threat of injury, incarceration, or death. The lawful powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article 1, Section 8, and they do not include forbidding drugs or any other substance. Politicians early in the 20th century understood this, and passed a Constitutional amendment allowing them to outlaw alcohol. No such amendment has ever been passed, or even proposed, with regard to drugs.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs".

Death , Alcohol , Law

“By way of that wretched sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is the wretched author explaining that we should be silent concerning Auschwitz, that Auschwitz doesn’t exist, or, rather, that it didn’t, for the only facts that cannot be explained are those that don’t or didn’t exist.”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

Way

“In contrast to the natural sciences, where Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein made their major contributions, most economics masterpieces were written when the authors were middle aged. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman come to mind. However, Paul started much earlier, in his 20s; and, even now, his new articles influence the fields of economics and finance.”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

4.Paul Samuelson is Unique.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

Age , Nature , Science

“Like most loners,” said Moddik, “you carry the seeds of violent authority. Loners need to be bossy. They quickly learn it’s the only method they have of shoving people off their backs.”

Tanith Lee book Drinking Sapphire Wine

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 137)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

People , Learning

“Like any internationalist, I embrace Scotland's interdependence and the advantages that such interdependence confers. But in international relations - perhaps even more than the economic sphere - there are major advantages to pursuing an independent policy that promotes Scotland's global interests. Indeed it precisely because we live in an interdependent world - one where markets are integrating and information flow is unstoppable - a world where the reality of climate change acts as a daily reminder of our reliance on each other - that independence matters. Interdependence is a welcome fact of modern global politics. What matters in the Scottish national interest - above all else - are the terms on which Scotland engages. The equality of esteem, of authority between nations matters more now than it has ever done.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008)

World , Reality , Change

“The following pictures are those which to the author seem the strangest. Without doubt they have their origin in Michelangelo Rome series of the main section that was sung with the loudest and most penetrating voice of this entire opus.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

'Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo'
written text with brush in her painting: 'Only by touching can greatness be achieved' in image JHM no. 4685 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004685/part/character/theme/keyword/M004685: in 'Life? or Theater..', p. 567
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

“Previous research addressing market orientation from a cultural perspective typically has used behavioral measures of this construct. Drawing on literature in the fields of organizational theory and marketing, the authors develop a multilayer model of market-oriented organizational culture. They draw an explicit distinction among values that support market orientation, norms for market orientation, artifacts indicating high and low market orientation, and market-oriented behaviors. On the basis Of qualitative research and a subsequent survey, the authors develop scales for measuring the different layers of market-oriented culture and analyze relationships among the different components of market-oriented culture. Findings indicate that artifacts play a crucial role in determining behavior within organizations. Results also indicate that a market-oriented culture influences financial performance indirectly through market performance and that this relationship is stronger in highly dynamic markets.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A multiple-layer model of market-oriented organizational culture", 2000, p. 449 ; Abstract

Behavior , Literature , Support , Drawing

“The Devil himself, which is the author of confusion and lies.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 4, member 1, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

“Either we, as a society, decide that copyright is the greater value to society, and take active steps to give up private communications as a concept. Either that, or we decide that the ability to communicate in private, without constant monitoring by authorities, has the greater value - in which case copyright will have to give way.”

Rickard Falkvinge (1972) former head of the Swedish Pirate Party

Wikinews Interview http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/%22Avast_ye_scurvy_file_sharers%21%22:_Interview_with_Swedish_Pirate_Party_leader_Rickard_Falkvinge (June 20, 2006)

Way , Communication

“I am continually amused by the Communist argument that the United States tries to prevent the less-developed countries from industrializing in order to keep them subservient to herself. In our extended dealings with the American aid authorities, we have never found this to be the case; on the contrary, they have helped us with a wide variety of industrial projects, including those that compete directly with American industries. The Americans have enough sense to prefer strong and prosperous friends, and they realize that their most lucrative international trade is with other highly industrialized countries, not with weak and backward ones.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Page 301
Publications, Mission for my Country (1961)

Sense , Strong , Help , Country

“There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young student. I can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/21/mode/1up pp. 21–22

Error

“Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens Chapter VI "Old Curiosity Shop" (1911)

“The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them. I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading…It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

Love , Children , Pleasure , Books

“The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how these powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 7: General View of the Remainder of My Life (p. 192)

God , Hostility , Truth , Sex

“Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Wassily Kandinsky, 1919 - his self-characterisation in 'Das Kunstblatt', 1919; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 -1920

Painting

“In the fifteenth century Rāmachandra, in his Prakriyā-kaumudī, or "Moonlight of Method," endeavoured to make Pāṇini's grammar easier by a more practical arrangement of its matter. Bhaṭṭoji's Siddhānta-kaumudī (seventeenth century) has a similar aim; an abridgment of this work, the Laghu-kaumudī, by Varadarāja is commonly used as an introduction to the native system of grammar. Among non-Pāṇinean grammarians may be mentioned Chandra (about 600 A. D.), the pseudo-Çākaṭāyana (later than the Kāçikā), and, the most important, Hemachandra (12th century), author of a Prākrit grammar.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Appendix A History of Sanskrit Literature

“What unites us in the Youth Revolution Council is the desire to oust the regime… We do not ask the members of the Council or of the Preparatory Committee about their source of authority, nor about their political, geographic, or sectarian affiliation… In this revolution, I have forgotten my partisan and geographic affiliations… I belong only to the people of the revolution. The revolution is a glorious [cause] that stands above any consideration.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman – A Profile (2011)

People , Youth

“A god that created the world and then walked off the site leaving it to its own devices is not a fit object of worship, nor a source of moral authority.”

Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher

Source: Think (1999), Chapter Five, God, p. 169

God , World

“… I began at the beginning, and read Hind's Logic, Whately's Logic, Reid's Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. But the book which was of most use to me on these subjects was Stewart's Elements. I found on odd volume of this in my father's study at Hauxwell. It attracted me; I read and re-read it with increasing satisfaction. To Dugald Stewart, an author now obsolete, I owe the first infusion of a taste for philosophical inquiry…..”

Mark Pattison (1813–1884) English author and Church of England priest

Memoirs (1885)

Books , Sense , Study , Reading

“The danger which threatened the natives in the future, at any rate in the mining districts, would arise from the desire to obtain a constant and cheap supply of native labour for the mines. It would be the duty of those in authority to guard the native against the oppressive laws which were in force in the Dutch Republics. In conclusion, he protested against a policy of harshness and violence in South Africa. We should try to inculcate forbearance, wisdom, and the generosity into the minds of those who had the government of the country.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

Speech to the Women's National Liberal Association Conference, Memorial Hall, London (12 June 1901), quoted in The Times (13 June 1901), p. 12.
1900s

Wisdom , Law , Future , Country

“The castle was far more than a walled and turreted fortress; it was an instrument of social control and the symbol of power, authority, and wealth.”

Marilyn Stokstad (1929–2016) art historian

Preface
Medieval castles (2005)

Wealth

“I thought that I was the only historian, that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man, who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford.”

David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian

'My Own Life' (1776), quoted in David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1741–1777), ed. Eugene Miller (1985), p. xxxvii

Fate , Disappointment , Tear , Rage

“I have said it many a time, and am surer of it than ever, that the life and death issue of Christianity is the inspiration and authority of the Bible.”

J. Sidlow Baxter (1903–1999) Australian theologian

Our Bible: The Most Critical Issue http://www.pwmi.org/christianfaith/ourbible.asp (1991).

Life , Death , Time

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: Epigrams, p. 356

People , Thinking

“I, Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr, Governor of the state of Maryland, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of Maryland, including but not limited to Title 14 and Section 13-702 of the Public Safety Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland, declare that a state of emergency exists in Baltimore City, I call the Maryland National Guard into action and state service and hereby authorize the Maryland Emergency Management Agency or other appropriate state authority, during this emergency period, to engage, deploy, and coordinate available resources.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Declaration of Emergency https://governor.maryland.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EO01.01.2015.16.pdf" (27 April 2015).

Law

“I have impressed upon you my preoccupation with earning money so as to have a secure existence over there. That's the way it have to be… I am very happy to hear that you [ Walter Pach ] sold these canvasses for me and thank you very sincerely for your friendship. But I am afraid of getting to the stage of needing to sell canvases, In a word, of being a painter for a living. – So I'll be leaving probably on the 22nd or rather 29th May [1915], if the police authorities allow me to take the steamer.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in Duchamp's letter to Walter Pach, Paris 27 April 1915; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 157
1915 - 1925

Money , Friendship , Way , Sincerity

“Here lies the author of this phrase: "The itch for disputing is the sore of churches." Seek his name elsewhere.”
Hic jacet hujus sententiæ primus author: DISPUTANDI PRURITUS ECCLESIARUM SCABIES. Nomen alias quære.

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

“Well, if our author in the wife offends
He has a husband that will make amends;
He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving,
And sure such kind good creatures may be living.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714).

Forgiveness , Drawing

“Though he [Charles Guignebert] could not accept either the Christ myth theory, which held that no historical Jesus existed, or the Dutch Radical denial that Paul authored any of the epistles, Guignebert took both quite seriously.”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

[Price, Robert M., w:Robert M. Price, Tom Flynn, Richard Dawkins, The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, https://books.google.com/books?id=fsZ26vQxJKMC&pg=PA372, 2007, Prometheus Books, Publishers, 978-1-61592-280-2, 372, Guignebert, Charles]

Christ

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.

The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace'. The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.

Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), pp. 487-488.
1970s

War , World , Peace , Law

“Contempt for the enemy, if illustrated, can prove to be an unwise form of falsehood. There was a time when German soldiers were popularly represented cringing, with their arms in the air and crying "Kamerad," until it occurred to Press and propaganda authorities that people were asking why, if this was the sort of material we were fighting against, had we not wiped them off the field in a few weeks.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction

People , Time , Fight , Cry

“But now if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year, while he continues excluded'; and they give him also a small hatchet, and the fore-mentioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years; and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be assistant to the righteous; that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavor to outshine his subjects either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal anything from those of his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels [or messengers]. These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Men , God , Hate

“But someone is bound to question … by what right I regard as Ideological State Apparatuses, institutions which for the most part do not possess public status, but are quite simply private institutions. As a conscious Marxist, Gramsci already forestalled this objection in one sentence. The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the (subordinate) domains in which bourgeois law exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses. It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they are realized are ‘public’ or ‘private’. What matters is how they function.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 97

Law , Exercises , Question , Parting

“They also found that their old religion was part of a larger religious system which once prevailed in other parts 'of the world as well. Nigel Pennick, author and thinker, found great similarity between old European Paganism and Hinduism. He said that Hinduism represented the Eastern expression of this universal tradition and foresaw the possibility that Hindus might come to accept Europe's Pagans as a European branch of Hinduism. Prudence Jones, the spokesperson for the U. K. Pagan Federation, said the same things. She observed that all the world's indigenous and ethnic religions have three features in common: they are nature-venerating, seeing nature as a manifestation of Divinity; secondly, they are polytheistic and recognize many Gods, many Manifestations; the third feature is that they all recognize the Goddess, the female aspect of Divinity as well as the male. She showed how European Paganism was similar to Hinduism, Shintoism, and the North American tradition. She thought that apart from doctrinal similarity, it would be useful for the European Pagans to be affiliated with a world Hindu organization which would give them legal protection - remember, that Paganism in Europe is still a heresy and it has no legal rights and protection. She emphasized that European Pagan religion is the native, indigenous religion of Europe, and religions with doctrines like Christianity came later.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

God , World , Religion , Nature

“Many of the core ideas of cybernetics have been assimilated by other disciplines, where they continue to influence scientific developments. Other important cybernetic principles seem to have been forgotten, though, only to be periodically rediscovered or reinvented in different domains. Some examples are the rebirth of neural networks, first invented by cyberneticists in the 1940's, in the late 1960's and again in the late 1980's; the rediscovery of the importance of autonomous interaction by robotics and AI in the 1990's; and the significance of positive feedback effects in complex systems, rediscovered by economists in the 1990's. Perhaps the most significant recent development is the growth of the complex adaptive systems movement, which, in the work of authors such as John Holland, Stuart Kauffman and Brian Arthur and the subfield of artificial life, has used the power of modern computers to simulate and thus experiment with and develop many of the ideas of cybernetics. It thus seems to have taken over the cybernetics banner in its mathematical modelling of complex systems across disciplinary boundaries, however, while largely ignoring the issues of goal-directedness and control.”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Source: Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics (2001), p.5 : About the state of the art of contemporary cybenetics

Mathematics , Idea

“A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann… and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation—whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

From the Author's Preface to Third Edition (1919)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

Truth , World , Feeling , Drawing

“The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Letter to "Music and the Drama", The Chicago Record-Herald (3 February 1903)
Letters and essays

People , Books , School , Search

“Admit their maxims, and the universe returns to a frightful chaos; all things are thrown into disorder upon the earth; all the notions of virtue and vice are overthrown; the most inviolable laws of society are abolished: the discipline of morality is swept away; the government of states and empires ceases to be subject to any rule; the whole harmony of political institutions is dissolved; and the human race becomes an assemblage of madmen, barbarians, cheats, unnatural wretches who have no other laws but force, no other curb than their passions and the dread of authority, no other tie than irreligion and independence, no other gods than themselves.”

Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742) French Catholic bishop and famous preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 348.

God , Law , Universe , Passion

“We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague non-natural sense. …Whence …this notion of "special creations"…Why, after rejecting all the rest of the story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

The Development Hypothesis (1852)

Men , Law , Understanding , Question

“Cannabis, just like morphine, has its usage in medicine. It's unpardonable that authorities forbid sick people access to this medicament and in majesty of law permit to sell cigarettes.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

(2013): Znamy radę programową Polskiej Sieci Polityki Narkotykowej http://pulsmedycyny.pl/3413324,78023,znamy-rade-programowa-polskiej-sieci-polityki-narkotykowej. Puls Medycyny (in Polish).

People , Law

“A pin is worth fighting for if a principle is involved. The first war with Great Britain was for principle and it gave us our independence and national existence. The war of 1812 was for principle and gave us our maritime independence. The war with Mexico was for principle and gave us the subjugated possessions on our whole Pacific coast. The war for the Union was for principle and resulted in the restoration of the authority of the constitution and gave us a people, north and south, animated by a military spirit which will be equal to every possible requirement.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Interview with the Washington, D.C. Evening Star (12 March 1889)
1890s

War , People , Animals , Fight

“The first thing the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi started on was construction of impressive buildings. The first sultan Qutbuddin Aibak had to establish Muslim power in India and to raise buildings "as quickly as possible, so that no time might be lost in making an impression on their newly-conquered subjects". Architecture was considered as the visual symbol of Muslim political power. It denoted victory with authority. The first two buildings of the early period in Delhi are the Qutb Minar and the congregational mosque named purposefully as the Quwwat-ul-Islam (might of Islam) Masjid. This mosque was commenced by Aibak in 592/1195. It was built with materials and gold obtained by destroying 27 Hindu and Jain temples in Delhi and its neighborhood. A Persian inscription in the mosque testifies to this. The Qutb Minar, planned and commenced by Aibak sometime in or before 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, was also constructed with similar materials, "the sculptured figures on the stones being either defaced or concealed by turning them upside down". A century and a quarter later Ibn Battutah describes the congregational mosque and the Qutb Minar. "About the latter he says that its staircase is so wide that elephants can go up there." About the former his observations are interesting. "Near the eastern gate of the mosque their lie two very big idols of copper connected together by stones. Every one who comes in and goes out of the mosque treads over them. On the site of this mosque was a bud khana, that is an idol house. After the conquest of Delhi it was turned into a mosque."”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Gordon Sanderson, 'Archaeology at the Qutb', Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1912-13; Ibn Battutah)

Lie , Time , Victory , Housing

“After writing the account given of the Savior’s ministry to the remnant of the seed of Jacob, upon this continent, it was easy to be seen, as the prophet said it would be, that darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the minds of the people. On reflecting further it was as easy to be seen that amid the great strife and noise concerning religion, none had authority from God to administer the ordinances of the Gospel. For the question might be asked, have men authority to administer in the name of Christ, who deny revelations, when His testimony is no less than the spirit of prophecy, and His religion based, built, and sustained by immediate revelations, in all ages of the world when He has had a people on earth? If these facts were buried, and carefully concealed by men whose craft would have been in danger if once permitted to shine in the faces of men, they were no longer to us; and we only waited for the commandment to be given ‘Arise and be baptized.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Men , God , People , Age

“Christ died for the ungodly. And if you turn to Him at this moment with an honest heart, and receive Him simply as your Saviour and your God, I have the authority of His word for telling you that He will in no wise cast out.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 152.

God , Heart , Christ

Quotes about authority page 22

Quotes about authority
page 22