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Authority Quotes


"Courtrooms contain every symbol of authority that a set designer could imagine. Everyone stands up when you come in. You wear a costume identifying you as, if not quite divine, someone special."


"The Gentlemen of England serve under the greatest cad in Europe."


"Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort."


"I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject."


"Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve."


"Don't name it, as they say, because instantly you offer it to this peculiar authority."


"I created no authority that wasn't already there under the constitution."


"Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels."


"Instead, I was interested in what I guess I could call narrative indeterminacy, in questioning the apparent, taken-for-granted authority of any particular representation of the events in question."


"It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for."



"Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them."


"Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority."


"The dead and past stories that I have told again in divers fashions, are not set down without authority."


"I'm going to make it a law that the correct way to address your sovereign is my giving a high five.' Kai's smiled brightened. 'That's genius. Me too."


"It was necessary to bluff the Japanese camp commanders, with whatever authority I could muster, that I had come officially to ensure that the surrender terms were being complied with and that living conditions for the POWs were being immediately improved."


"The Priestly Code preponderates over the rest of the legislation in force, as well as in bulk; in all matters of primary importance it is the normal and final authority."


"Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs."



"Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller."


"I prize the conditions under which I have lived because they have permitted me to choose my opportunities, to inquire into such matters as interested me, and to publish what I believed to be true, uncontrolled by any central authority."


"Eighty percent of the problems that beset unification immediately disappeared when the President signed the bill increasing the authority and the responsibility of the Secretary of Defense."


"A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority."


"Divine right went out with the American Revolution and doesn't belong to the White House aides. What meat do they eat that makes them grow so great?"


"We have to give value to authority. We have to give value to office, being in office, holding office."


"The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority."


"Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing."


"This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims."


"Foreign nationals entering the United States illegally who are taken into custody by the Border Protection Corps or by State or local law enforcement authorities must be promptly delivered to a federal law enforcement authority."


"In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable."


"'Referring the matter to a committee' can be a device for diluting authority, diffusing responsibility and delaying decisions."


"Whenever there is authority, there is a natural inclination to disobedience."


"The last job I applied for was to be a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority in 1957."


"I harbored a lot of resentment as a teenager and as a young adult. I still have a problem with authority, I'm trying to listen!"


"And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority."
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