Quotes about authority
page 28

Richard Henry Lee photo

“The military forces of a free country may be considered under three general descriptions — 1. The militia. 2. the navy — and 3. the regular troops — and the whole ought ever to be, and understood to be, in strict subordination to the civil authority; and that regular troops, and select corps, ought not to be kept up without evident necessity. Stipulations in the constitution to this effect, are perhaps, too general to be of much service, except merely to impress on the minds of the people and soldiery, that the military ought ever to be subject to the civil authority, &c. But particular attention, and many more definite stipulations, are highly necessary to render the military safe, and yet useful in a free government; and in a federal republic, where the people meet in distinct assemblies, many stipulations are necessary to keep a part from transgressing, which would be unnecessary checks against the whole met in one legislature, in one entire government.”

Richard Henry Lee (1732–1794) American statesman

A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, and render regular troops in a great measure unnecessary. The powers to form and arm the militia, to appoint their officers, and to command their services, are very important; nor ought they in a confederated republic to be lodged, solely, in any one member of the government. First, the constitution ought to secure a genuine and guard against a select militia, by providing that the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms; and that all regulations tending to render this general militia useless and defenceless, by establishing select corps of militia, or distinct bodies of military men, not having permanent interests and attachments in the community to be avoided. I am persuaded, I need not multiply words to convince you of the value and solidity of this principle, as it respects general liberty, and the duration of a free and mild government: having this principle well fixed by the constitution, then the federal head may prescribe a general uniform plan, on which the respective states shall form and train the militia, appoint their officers and solely manage them, except when called into the service of the union, and when called into that service, they may be commanded and governed by the union. This arrangement combines energy and safety in it; it places the sword in the hands of the solid interest of the community, and not in the hands of men destitute of property, of principle, or of attachment to the society and government, who often form the select corps of peace or ordinary establishments: by it, the militia are the people, immediately under the management of the state governments, but on a uniform federal plan, and called into the service, command, and government of the union, when necessary for the common defence and general tranquility. But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it. As a farther check, it may be proper to add, that the militia of any state shall not remain in the service of the union, beyond a given period, without the express consent of the state legislature.
Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 169 (1788)

Rudolf Hess photo
Ovadia Yosef photo

“The most significant halachic authority of the last 100 years, whose positions helped fashion a balanced and moderate Judaism.”

Ovadia Yosef (1920–2013) Israeli rabbi

Obituary Jewish Chronicle, 11 Oct 2013 page 33.

William James photo
Emperor Norton photo
John Stuart Mill photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Samuel Adams photo

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of time press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Rejected resolution for a clause to add to the first article of the U.S. Constitution, in the debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788 (6 February 1788); this has often been attributed to Adams, but he is nowhere identified as the person making the resolution in Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Held in the year 1788 And which finally ratified the Constitution of the United States. (1856) p. 86. https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog
Disputed

Samuel Adams photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Robert Greene photo
Robert Greene photo
Teal Swan photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Hans Morgenthau photo
Johannes Kepler photo
Jon Postel photo

“I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet. But at the end, that article wasn’t very complimentary, because the author suggested that I wasn’t doing a very good job, and that I ought to be replaced by a "professional."”

Jon Postel (1943–1998) American computer scientist

Of course, there isn’t any "God of the Internet." The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together.
When asked "What do you think of being called a god?" in "Heavenly Father of the NET", an interview article in NetWorker (Summer 1997); This refers to a statement "if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel", which appeared in the British magazine The Economist.

Benito Mussolini photo

“Religious morality shows the original stigmata of authoritarianism precisely because it pretends to be the revelation of divine authority.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Uthman photo

“Things may be achieved by means of authority that cannot be achieved by means of the Quran.”

Uthman (574–656) Companion of Muhammad and third Rashidun Caliph

Al-Kamil fi'l Lughat wa'-Arab, Vol. 1, p. 257

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Pope Pius VI photo

“It is nature herself, therefore, which (decrees) that the usage which each must make of his reason should consist essentially in recognizing his sovereign author. ... In order to make this phantom of unlimited freedom vanish from the eyes of healthy reason, is it not enough to say that this system was that of the Vaudois and the Beguars?”

Pope Pius VI (1717–1799) pope and sovereign of the Papal States

Quod aliquantum (10 March 1791), quoted in André Latreille and Joseph E. Cunneen, 'The Catholic Church and the Secular State: The Church and the Secularization of Modern Societies', CrossCurrents Vol. 13, No. 2 (Spring 1963), p. 221

Jacinda Ardern photo
John Scotus Eriugena photo

“For authority proceeds from true reason, but reason certainly does not proceed from authority. For every authority which is not upheld by true reason is seen to be weak, whereas true reason is kept firm and immutable by her own powers and does not require to be confirmed by the assent of any authority.”

Original: (la) Auctoritas siquidem ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. Omnis enim auctoritas, quae vera ratione non approbatur, infirma videtur esse. Vera autem ratio, quum virtutibus suis rata atque immutabilis munitur, nullius auctoritatis adstipulatione roborari indigent.

De Divisione Naturae, Bk. 1, ch. 69; translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, cited from Peter Dronke (ed.) A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy (Cambridge: CUP, 1988) p. 2.

Chief Joseph photo
Dana Arnold photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar photo
Don Lee (author) photo

“I’d like to see us get to the point where Asian American authors can have Asian American characters and a big deal isn’t made about it, or at least so it’s not the first thing mentioned…”

Don Lee (author) (1959) American writer

On what he hopes for the future of Asian American writers in “Don Lee: The Ethnic Literature Box” https://www.guernicamag.com/don-lee-the-ethnic-literature-box/ in Guernica Magazine (2012 Jun 25)

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve photo

“...I can savor a work, but it is difficult for me to judge it independently from the author, and I would gladly say, as is the tree, so is the fruit.”

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869) French literary critic

Original: (fr) ...je puis goûter une œuvre, mais il m'est difficile de la juger indépendamment de la connaissance de l'homme même, et je dirais volontiers: tel arbre, tel fruit.

Ron Paul photo

“What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick?””

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
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

Richard D. Wolff photo
Robert Filmer photo
Arun Shourie photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

“Democracy is government of the strongest, just as military despotism is. This is a bond of connection between the two. They are the brutal forms of government and as strength and authority go together, necessarily arbitrarily.”

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

Private notes, quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952), p. 72
Undated

H. H. Asquith photo
Koenraad Elst photo

“The crucial questions in politics are not questions of right and wrong, but of obedience and disobedience. If you do not submit to political authority, then "If I say you're wrong, you're wrong, even if you're right."”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

《乌克兰转型中的宪政权威》 ["The authority of the constitution in a Ukraine in transition"] (2004), translated by David Ownby in Rethinking China's Rise https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=761eDwAAQBAJ, p. 27

Walter Raleigh (professor) photo

“The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.”

Walter Raleigh (professor) (1861–1922) British academic

p. 28 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b325850;view=1up;seq=34
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

Lucy Parsons photo

“Oh, working man! Oh, starved, outraged, and robbed laborer, how long will you lend attentive ear to the authors of your misery? When will you become tired of your slavery and show the same by stepping boldly into the arena with those who declare that "Not to be a slave is to dare and DO?"”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

When will you tire of such a civilization and declare in words, the bitterness of which shall not be mistaken, "Away with a civilization that thus degrades me; it is not worth the saving?"

"Our Civilization: Is It Worth Saving?" (1885)

Alex Grey photo
Tressie McMillan Cottom photo

“The hyper-visibility means that you both can't hide, but also never really feel completely seen by authority figures and by your peer groups. Trapped in that space of hyper-visibility, I think, is where we wrestle with the ideas of, 'What part of me matters?'”

Tressie McMillan Cottom American writer, sociologist, and professor

On the concept of being hyper-visible in “In 'Thick,' Tressie McMillan Cottom Looks At Beauty, Power And Black Womanhood In America” https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/01/21/in-thick-tressie-mcmillan-cottom-looks-at-beauty-power-and-black-womanhood-in-america in WBUR (2019 Jan 21)

Maurice Barrès photo

“The reader collaborates with the author in every book, or The reader is co-author in every book.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Tout livre a pour collaborateur son lecteur

Source: Biographical notice http://www.evene.fr/celebre/biographie/maurice-barres-499.php on Evene

Alexander Pope photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Don Bluth photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Zaman Ali photo
Samuel P. Huntington photo

“When an American thinks about the problem of government-building, he directs himself not to be creation of authority and the accumulation of power but rather to the limitation of authority and the division of power.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Political Order in Changing Societies https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/gov2126/files/huntington_political_order_changing_soc.pdf (1968), p. 7

“It is most likely that the author was the only one who owed and paid a debt of tears. I know something about this but not all the details.”

Note in the first chapter of an 1814 version of The Story of the Stone, as quoted by Liu Zaifu in Reflections on "Dream of the Red Chamber", trans. Shu Yunzhong (Cambria Press, 2008), p. 197

Dorothy Thompson photo

“The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 42
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Guy P. Harrison photo
Rubén Blades photo

“The bully got bullied...and that was happening in all levels of society: governments were treating people badly, authorities were not doing what they were supposed to do and people saw in that example, a way of getting even.”

Rubén Blades (1948) Panamanian musician, singer, composer, actor, activist, and politician

On the song "Pedro Navaja" in "Rubén Blades" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/latinmusicusa/legends/ruben-blades/ in PBS

Francis Bacon photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

George Mason photo
Robert Boyle photo
Uwais al-Qarani photo
Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Don Feder photo

“A civilization of life is one that embraces life, caring for families, supporting children and the elderly. A civilization of death authorizes the killing of unborn human beings, condones the killing of the elderly and encourages people to live only in their own interest. A culture of life is the one with eternal and timeless values.”

Don Feder (1946) writer; Media consultant

Is Formal Marriage Out of Fashion? Interview with Communications Director of the World Congress of Families Don Feder https://youth-time.eu/don-feder-communications-director-of-the-world-congress-of-families/ (November 15, 2014)

Jon Postel photo
Andy Ngo photo
Prevale photo

“True feeling doesn't program any moment or know time. Born from the heart, the only author of its evolution.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Il vero sentimento non programma alcun momento né conosce tempo. Nasce dal cuore, unico autore della sua evoluzione.
Source: prevale.net

Petr Chelčický photo

“But true Christians love God and their neighbors as themselves; they commit no evil by the grace of God. It is not necessary to compel them to goodness since they know better what is good than the law-imposing authority. They have a knowledge of God within, which is a knowledge of His commandments and His love. Having His love within they do good to others and are just to all men in accordance with His law so that the authorities which rule the world have no occasion to find them guilty.”

Variant: A world contrary to God must be kept within bounds by the world’s sword. But true Christians love God and their neighbors as themselves; they commit no evil by the grace of God. It is not necessary to compel them to goodness since they know better what is good than the law imposing authority.
Source: The Net of Faith (c. 1443), Chapter 95, Summary

Murray Bookchin photo

“People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights—this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left, and I feel much closer, ideologically, to such individuals than I do to the totalitarian liberals and Marxist-Leninists of today.”

Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher

“Reason Interview: Murray Bookchin: A controversial anarchist talks about government, the Libertarian Party, Ayn Rand, and the evolution of his own ideas” http://reason.com/archives/1979/10/01/interview-with-murray-bookchin/1, Leslee J. Newman, Reason magazine, (October 1979) pp. 34-39.

Leopold I of Belgium photo
Mary Ruwart photo

“We have found that it's a good idea to read as many authors and as many different genres as possible. That way, we can learn more about writing and it gives us ideas to try different things.”

Marcia Jones (writer) (1958) American author

Marcia Thornton Jones Interview https://web.archive.org/web/20121024121117/http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/marcia-thornton-jones-interview-transcript (1997)

Felix Adler photo
Felix Adler photo
Elizabeth Blackwell photo
Jason Tanamor photo
Giles Rooke photo

“Whatever doubts I had, I submit to the authority of the other Judges.”

Giles Rooke (1743–1808) British judge (1743-1808)

Mitchell v. Cockburne (1794), 2 H. B. 382.

Thomas Hobbes photo
David Lloyd George photo

“If it is right that the State should resume its authority over the land for the purposes of burying the dead, it is surely also right that it should exercise its ownership where it is necessary it should do so to feed the living.”

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

Speech in Killerton Park, near Exeter, opening the Liberal land campaign (17 September 1925), quoted in The Times (18 September 1925), p. 14
Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons

Ignatius Ayau Kaigama photo

“We keep appealing to the authorities to do what is needed, and we pray to God because He is the optimal security that we have. We can’t depend on human security!”

Ignatius Ayau Kaigama (1958) Nigerian Catholic archbishop

Archbp. Kaigama calls on Gvt and Intl Community to protect Nigerians https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2020-12/nigeria-kidnappings-scholars-priests-lawlessness-appeal-kaigama.html (18 December 2020)

John Byrom photo
Emma Goldman photo

“Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?”

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Romila Thapar photo
Glacier Kwong photo

“The motivation for me as an activist is the belief that no one is subordinate to another. The government is merely an agent of the people. We lend authority to it, and when it performs badly, we reserve the right to take it back.”

Glacier Kwong (1996) Hong Kong human rights activist

Hong Kong’s angry young millennials: an interview with Joshua Wong https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/hong-kong-angry-young-millennials-interview-with-joshua-wong/ (1 November 2015)

Ruth Benedict photo
Emer de Vattel photo

“The citizens are the members of the civil society: linked to this society by certain duties and subject to its authority, they participate with equality has its advantages.”

Alternate: The citizens are the members of the civil society, bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority; they equally participate in its advantages.
The natives or natural-born citizens are those born in the country of parents who are citizens.
..
if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country
page 176 https://books.google.ca/books?id=NukJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176 of English translation published in 1883,
while the bottom-left marks it as page 176, it is listed as page 101 on the top-left. The section of the book is titled "OF OUR NATIVE COUNTRY, ETC." and it is part of chapter XIX called "OF OUR NATIVE COUNTRY AND SEVERAL THINGS THAT RELATE TO IT"
quoted in 1856 case https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/60/393/#476 in supreme court
quoted in 1942 by Mr. Stewart seen in page 1683 https://books.google.ca/books?id=qiI9TLONLVMC&pg=PA1683 of part 2 of volume 8 of "Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress Second Session"
The Law of Nations (1758)
Original: (fr) Les citoyens sont les membres de la societe civile : lies a cette societe par certains devoirs et soumis a son autorite, ils participent avec egalite a ses avantages.

Thokozani Khuphe photo
Éric Zemmour photo
Thomas Aquinas photo