Quotes & Sayings About Legitimacy

I do think the whole question of judicial accountability is a complicated one. On the one hand, you want to encourage judicial independence. And it's always, I think, problematic when an unpopular decision triggers a recall election.Because it sends a disempowering message to judges. On the other hand, it's the only way that voters have to rein in someone whose views are really so out of the mainstream of public opinion that they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judicial process. — Deborah Rhode

We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the court's own legitimacy and authority. — Noah Feldman

We need a reform of the Security Council. It must be perceived as truly representative by all the 191 member states, to uphold the credibility and legitimacy of the UN as the main political arena. — Anna Lindh

Maybe perversion was not illness at all. Maybe every form of deviance was just a potential force of union and community, one that had not yet organized itself into political lobbies, self-help groups, bowling leagues ... Once you grant legitimacy to one sexual proclivity, what's to stop the others from demanding their rights too? — Supervert

The power of belief gives legitimacy to whatever may be necessary. — Steven Redhead

Today's Republican Party ... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance. — Thomas E. Mann

I really would have been stupid not to have done it. It was also a film that was actually happening, I mean, Miramax was doing it, and it had a kind of legitimacy to it. And once I read the script, I was there. — Adam Arkin

Of course, at some point you had to ask yourself how much legitimacy any government had that feared dissension within more than invasion from without, but — Yoon Ha Lee

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them legitimacy. We indies only have each other. — Mark Coker

I already have legitimacy as a filmmaker and now I'm trying to do stuff that's just fun. Until I find a cool tangible subject again that I want to tackle. — John Singleton

There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was "socialism gone wrong." This thought expresses precisely the major political danger of our times, which is the belief that politics involves a choice of systems, as a means to an end, so that one system may "go wrong" while another "goes right." The truth is that socialism is wrong, precisely because it believes that it can go right - precisely because it sees politics asa means to an end. Politics is a manner of social existence, whose bedrock is the given obligations from which our social identities are formed. Politics is a form of association which is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is founded on legitimacy, and legitimacy resides in our sense that we are made by our inheritance. — Roger Scruton

Of course the welfare of our children is a legitimate state interest. However, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples fails to further this interest. Instead, needlessly stigmatizing and humiliating children who are being raised by the loving couples targeted by Virginia's Marriage Laws betrays that interest. E. S.-T. [the 15-year-old daughter of two of the plaintiffs], like the thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples, is needlessly deprived of the protection, the stability, the recognition and the legitimacy that marriage conveys ... — Arenda L. Wright Allen

I don't think I'm in the position to bestow legitimacy on anyone. — A. J. Jacobs

And intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything. This, in any case, is the charm of the discipline and of the social sciences in general: one starts from square one, so that there is some hope of making major progress. In France, I believe, economists are slightly more interested in persuading historians and sociologists, as well as people outside the academic world, that what they are doing is interesting (although they are not always successful — Anonymous

Speak the truth. Transparency breeds legitimacy. — John C. Maxwell

The legitimacy of a war is not established by how it is organized but by what it achieves. — David Brooks

I mean,you will have an Afghan government. There are two roads here. One is obviously a run-off election or a negotiated settlement. But what's most important about that process is that there's a credibility and a legitimacy to the government at the end of that process. So which road they choose, that's up to them. It must have - be legitimate and credible in the eyes of the Afghan people. — Rahm Emanuel

Here in Florida, we know plenty about the Castro brothers, and we hear stories of their ruthless and violent rule far too often. It is shameful that we would grant them any shred of legitimacy. — Rick Scott

In fact, the anti-Muslim stance of much of Hindu nationalism can be construed as partly a displaced hostility against the colonial power which could not be expressed directly because of the new legitimacy created within Hinduism for this power. Such a dynamic would seem to roughly duplicate the displacement of Oedipal hostilities in the authoritarian personality. — Ashis Nandy

If individuals do not occupy their legitimate position, then it will be occupied by a god or a king or a coalition of interest groups. If citizens do not exercise the powers confered by their legitimacy, others will do so.
(I - The Great Leap Backwards) — John Ralston Saul

Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy. — Dani Rodrik

You can understand why the original framers of judicial ethics thought it would be undignified and would call into question the legitimacy of the judicial decision-making process to have mudslinging by judges, but the way that we hobble people of enormous integrity from defending themselves is, I think, deeply problematic in states where you have an elected judiciary, or a judge is subject to recall. — Deborah Rhode

Zionism is only around 100 years old. It is the transformation from religion to nationalism, to materialism created by non-religious Jews who hated their religion. The reason why they use the name Israel, the Star of David, hijacking, stealing the identity of Judaism and the Jewish people is in order to gain a legitimacy for their existence that should lead people to say, 'oh, it is God given to them' and that they should use fear and intimidate people from speaking out against their actions because they will call those that do anti Semitic; it couldn't be anything further from the Truth. — Yisroel Dovid Weiss

All day long because it's what you've been trained to do. But if, in your heart, you believe that the pain you're feeling is real and if you believe it's connected to some underlying condition, it is unlikely that the pain or the spirit will leave. Demons are more sensitive to what you think than what you say. Your belief in the legitimacy of the symptoms plays into the agenda of the evil spirit and what you believe can allow it to remain there. What we believe about the afflicting spirit can either empower it or remove its power over us. The degree to which any spirit can influence us is determined by how much we believe what it says. — Praying Medic

Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted. — Michael Ignatieff

Here, I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference based on international legitimacy and a complete cessation of settlement activities. — Mahmoud Abbas

In any institution-factory, university, health center, or whatever-there are a variety of interests that ought to be represented in decision-making: the work force itself, the community in which it is located, users of its products or services, institutions that compete for the same resources. These interests should be directly represented in democratic structures that displace and eliminate private ownership of the means of production or resources, an anachronism with no legitimacy. — Noam Chomsky

The Court has a special responsibility to ensure that the Constitution works in practice. While education, including the transmission of our civic values from one generation to the next, must play the major role in maintaining public confidence in the Court's decisions, the Court too must help maintain public acceptance of its own legitimacy. It can do this best by helping ensure that the Constitution remains "workable" in a broad sense of the term. Specifically, it can and should interpret the Constitution in a way that works for the people of today. — Stephen G. Breyer

Years of crisis have culminated in a Europe that has lost legitimacy with its own citizens and credibility with the rest of the world. — Yanis Varoufakis

Military intervention cannot liberate women because it is embedded within a set of assumptions, beliefs, and social relations that reinforce and reproduce gender inequality, as well as other social inequalities within and across nation-states. Military intervention depends upon a belief in the legitimacy of armed violence in resolving political problems, which in turn depends upon our adherence to particular ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman. — Nadje Al-Ali

In truth, there will never be enough power in the presidency for an incumbent to make good on a purely constructive leadership project, and it is unlikely that there will ever be another president stretched so thinly by a determination to use great power to do just that. Lyndon Johnson was a full-service president who had at his disposal an alignment of political resources, economic resources, international resources, and military resources unmatched in the annals of presidential history. The problem is that in a full-service presidency, where no interest of political significance is denied a modicum of legitimacy, resources turn fickle; the exercise of power consumes authority. Committed to a wholly affirmative result, Johnson could not rest content to let anyone carry the brunt of change. — Stephen Skowronek

The authority of science ... promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies ... Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality ... In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad. — Cornel West

With a nonviolent movement we are still inviting a strong reaction from the government or ruling authorities. We are inviting a powerful reaction against ourselves. But it undermines the moral legitimacy of our current government. That is the path we need to pursue. Rather than reinforcing their legitimacy we need to undermine their legitimacy. — Tim DeChristopher

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question. — David Korten

What you're seeing is a loss of confidence in institutions and their legitimacy because they are not seen as delivering. It's hardly a surprise that it's producing a degree of paralysis. Politics becomes very reactive and it's hard to deal with the bigger issues. — Jonathan Wood

Global actions require local and national participation. International cooperation and action requires community perspectives and legitimacy if it is to be effective. — Ian Goldin

This trial cannot be separated from the process of the historical struggle in Palestine that continues today between the Zionist Movement and the Palestinian people, a struggle that centers on Palestinian land, history, civilization, culture and identityAs for your judicial apparatus, which is where this court comes from: it is one of the instruments of the occupation whose function is to give the cover of legal legitimacy to the crimes of the occupation, in addition to consecrating its systems and allowing the imposition of these systems on our people through force. — Ahmad Sa'adat

Reaffirming the justice of the American system bolsters our legitimacy with allies, thereby encouraging further cooperation and improving our national security. — John Garamendi

Marriage and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man's exploitation of the sex-pleasure. The difference between them was a difference of class. If a woman had money she might dictate her own terms: equality, a life contract, and the legitimacy - that is, the property-rights - of her children. If she had no money, she was a proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. And — Upton Sinclair

Everything needs to be public. The legitimacy of the courts comes from the fact that they reason openly, on the record, based on facts. — Jed S. Rakoff

So legitimacy may follow power as was powerfully argued over three centuries ago by Hobbes. But in ways that are more perverse and for reasons that may have more to do with ways of seeing the world than previously recognized. This may sound bleak. But identifying the role that mental models play in social exclusion can help development practitioners tackle the problem. — Anonymous

As we see, this is an illegal state; it is a cancerous entity and the root of all the crises and wars and cannot be a factor in bringing about a true and just peace in this region. Therefore, we cannot acknowledge the existence of a state called Israel, not even far in the future, as some people have tried to suggest. Time does not cancel the legitimacy of the Palestinian claim. — Hassan Nasrallah

As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict. — J.M. Coetzee

Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in the negotiations, may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they had been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities. Without that desperately needed legitimacy, the dictators cannot continue to rule indefinitely. — Gene Sharp

The situation in the region is flammable and may explode at any moment, because of the crucial events and because of the absence of justice in executing the international legitimacy resolutions, regarding the Israeli Arab cause and the oppression on Palestinians by Israelis. — Ali Abdullah Saleh

Notwithstanding what some regard as the institutionalization of compassion, the transfer society quashes genuine virtue. Redistribution of income by means of government coercion is a form of theft. Its supporters attempt to disguise its essential character by claiming that democratic procedures give it legitimacy, but this justification is specious. Theft is theft, whether it be carried out by one thief or by a hundred million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft. — Robert Higgs

Refugees such as ourselves could never dare question the Disneyland ideology followed by most Americans, that theirs was the happiest place on earth. But Dr. Hedd was beyond reproach, for he was an English immigrant. His very existence as such validated the legitimacy of the former colonies, while his heritage and accent triggered the latent Anglophilia and inferiority complex found in many Americans. Dr. Hedd was clearly aware of his privilege and was amused at the discomfort he was causing his American hosts. It — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Where are we as a modern civilization if our educational institutions conspire to train only a fraction of our capacities? and if this is all they can really do, then why not acknowledge that fact openly and give legitimacy to the other alternative forms of education that do cultivate those neglected dimensions of personality, instead of pretending that anything lying outside the standards set by the Wester analytic tradition is either inferior, anti-intellectual, or diabolic? (p. 293-294) — Eugene Taylor

I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, and that is marriage. I think, for instance, that it would be far easier for Americans to elect a black president or a female president than an unmarried president. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In the radical feminist view, the new feminism is not just the revival of a serious political movement for social equality. It is the second wave of the most important revolution in history. Its aim: the overthrow of the oldest, most rigid class/caste system in existence, the class system based on sex - a system consolidated over thousands of years, lending the archetypal male and female roles and undeserved legitimacy and seeming permanence. — Shulamith Firestone

The only thing a lawyer won't question is the legitimacy of his mother. — W.C. Fields

Democracy gives the aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be considered tyranny. — Walter E. Williams

To measure is to determine the ratio of one quantity to another which is invariable or assumed to be invariable. Invariability in respect of the property to be measured, or at least the legitimacy of assuming such invariability, is a sine qua non of all measurement. Only when this assumption is admissible is it possible to determine the variations that are to be measured. — Ludwig Von Mises

Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true. The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis is in no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, then religious faith is a pure superfluity, better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of serious minds. I myself believe, of course, that the religious hypothesis gives to the world an expression which specifically determines our reactions, and makes them in a large part unlike what they might be on a purely naturalistic scheme of belief. — William James

The fantastic is in complicity with the realist model, in the claims that realism makes to represent the true face of reality. It points to the gaps and inadequacies of realism, but does not question the legitimacy of its claims to represent reality. The concept of suspension of disbelief', that beloved criterion of positivist criticism supposedly serving to establish the legitimacy of the fantastic, confirms this hegemony. — Michael Richardson

If you just take ... the feeling of legitimacy away from them, if you turn it around so they feel like they are committing a crime by watching ... they'll be confused and scared and worried and they'll just return to their ... quietly desperate lives. — John Green

Governments everywhere that are unable to guarantee equitable growth and social welfare have suffered a fatal decay of legitimacy. — Pankaj Mishra

When you're an artist, nobody ever tells you or hits you with the magic wand of legitimacy. You have to hit your own head with your own handmade wand. And you feel stupid doing it. — Amanda Palmer

Without the participation of one fifth of the global population, without the endorsement of the world's second-largest economy, without the political will and security guarantee of this emerging power, international institutions and norms will be irrelevant and the legitimacy and credibility of their resolutions and arrangements will fall short of promise. — Wang Yizhou

If the constitution is not changed, then we will try to bring it down either before the referendum through the law by filing a suit in international or local courts, if we can, challenging the legitimacy of this constitution and the National Assembly. — Saleh Al-Mutlaq

Misuse of the Koran to provide legitimacy for violence is common, particularly in Europe, where terrorists tend not to be well-educated Muslims. — Mia Bloom

Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition. It — Yuval Noah Harari

Writing gives legitimacy to daydreams! — Tyan Wyss

For the institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from exisiting national parliaments. — Larry Siedentop

Power without legitimacy tempts tests of strength; legitimacy without power tepmts empty posturing. — Henry Kissinger

The fact that a crime might have been committed with impunity in the past may make it seem more familiar and less gruesome, but surely does not give it any greater legitimacy. — Jonathan Kozol

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced - the just demands of peace and security will be met - or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power. — Colin Powell

To create a free society is not to accomplish the impossible task of convincing all people to abandon aggression, but to accomplish the essential task of convincing enough people to abandon the belief that aggression is ever legitimate. — Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

All empires have depended on local legitimacy and local collaboration; they are not based primarily on coercion. An imperial rule that relies wholly on coercion can't endure. It's too expensive. — Niall Ferguson

... Protestantism, in its quest for 'rational knowledge' of God's purpose and for an understanding of this world, engendered its own demise, for it lent legitimacy to a secular science that in turn rejected and devalued all religious values. And in this respect, Protestantism effectively devalued or disenchanted itself, for in its attempt to prove its own intrinsic rationality through non-religious means it affirmed the value of science, and with this laid itself open to the charge of irrationalism and to attack from the outside from 'rational', secular forms of this-worldly legitimation. — Nicholas Gane

In recent years, as personal memories have faded, another perspective is beginning to make a tentative appearance in China. This view acknowledges the colossal wrongs committed during the Cultural Revolution, but it begins to inquire whether perhaps Mao raised an important question, even if his answer to it proved disastrous. The problem Mao is said to have identified is the relationship of the modern state - especially the Communist state - to the people it governs. In largely agricultural - and even incipient industrial - societies, governance concerns issues within the capacity of the general public to understand. Of course, in aristocratic societies, the relevant public is limited. But whatever the formal legitimacy, some tacit consensus by those who are to carry out directives is needed - unless governance is to be entirely by imposition, which is usually unsustainable over a historic period. — Henry Kissinger

I've not been to Afghanistan or - but what people are clearly pointing to is that it becomes more difficult to have it. You could do it. I think weather is a factor. The most important factor though is credibility and legitimacy. What I wanted earlier to say is what I think Senator [John] Kerry is pointing to, which is important, is the strategic review on whether to send more troops is only one piece of the puzzle, important piece. — Rahm Emanuel

I think, though, if I had to look at the role of government and what it does in people's lives, I see the EEOC as having much more legitimacy than the others, if properly run. — Clarence Thomas

There's no "correct path" to becoming a real artist. You might think you'll gain legitimacy by going to art school, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it's all bullshit, and it's all in your head. You're an artist when you say you are. And you're a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected. — Amanda Palmer

The lack of quality dance music and the fact that here in the United States, house music is not seen as anything viable by the music industry. I figured that this might be another shot at the industry looking at the possibilities of house music and giving it a little bit more legitimacy than what they give it. It's a host of different things, but it's something that I needed to say musically. — Frankie Knuckles

Black success stories lend credence to the notion that anyone, no matter how poor or how black you may be, can make it to the top, if only you try hard enough. These stories "prove" that race is no longer relevant. Whereas black success stories undermined the logic of Jim Crow, they actually reinforce the system of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration depends for its legitimacy on the widespread belief that all those who appear trapped at the bottom actually chose their fate. — Michelle Alexander

The legitimacy of your desires to exist is paramount to manifesting your desires within your reality. — Steven Redhead

Force loses its legitimacy when it is used instead of free and open discussion. — Gustavo De Greiff

Government in and of itself is the foremost agent for destroying order and imposing chaos."
"To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war."
"Political theory would be fine in a perfect world, but in an uncertain one, it is a dangerous gamble. — L.K. Samuels

For the earliest period of the history of Israel, all that precedes the building of the temple, not a trace can be found of any sanctuary of exclusive legitimacy. — Julius Wellhausen

This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy. — Golda Meir

We don't need legitimacy. We exist. Therefore we are legitimate. — Menachem Begin

Whatever you acknowledgement gains the legitimacy to exist within your world. — Steven Redhead

Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg

As the corporation's size and power grew, so did the need to assuage people's fears of it. The corporation suffered its first full-blown legitimacy crisis in the wake of the early-twentieth-century merger movement, when, for the first time, many Americans realized that corporations, now turned behemoths, threatened to overwhelm their social institutions and governments. — Joel Bakan

Without chemical slaughterhouses, without a systematic mass murder, the tragedy of the Jews is just one out of the numerous tragedies that befell the nations of Europe during the Second World War. The Jewish people thus loses its martyr status, and the State of Israel, whose establishing was approved by the world under the impression of an alleged 'unparalleled genocide,' would lose its legitimacy. — Jurgen Graf

And when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.6 — Malcolm Gladwell

I am most proud about the science I've done with my own two hands because I have always thought that even if your life path takes you into a leadership position outside the area you were known for, your legitimacy remains in that first field. — Gustav Nossal

A timeline for bringing U.S. troops home that is negotiated with the Iraqi government would also boost the Iraqi government's legitimacy and claim to self-rule, and force the Iraqi government to take responsibility for itself and its citizens. — Peter DeFazio

Like how the government of General Abacha was using its foreign policy to legitimize itself in the eyes of other African countries. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The two bond over their mutual lack of family ties: Saul from his disownment, Miriam from the car accident that orphaned her as a college junior. Both want children. Miriam has inherited her parents' idea of procreative legitimacy, wants to compensate for her only-child-dom. She sees in Saul the househusband who will enable her parental ambitions without disabling her autonomy. In Miriam, Saul sees the means to a book-lined study and a lifestyle conducive to mystical advancement. They are both absolutely certain these things equal love. — Myla Goldberg

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak. — Michael Ignatieff

Well it did not make excessive sense to say that 20 million people are the recognized government of a billion people that have their own institutions. We did not change it in the sense that we said this has to end, but there was a U.N. vote that transferred the legitimacy of China from Taiwan to Beijing. Beijing was recognized as the government of all of China. Then, under President Carter, we followed what the U.N. had already done eight years earlier. — Henry A. Kissinger

Ideology follows the money."
"Governments don't protect people, people protect governments."
"To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war. — Lawrence Samuels

What is power, after all? Every one of the power elite's overwhelming advantages - military forces, surveillance systems, crowd control technology, control over the media, and nearly all the money in the world - depends on having people obeying orders and executing an assigned role. This obedience is a matter of shared ideologies, institutional culture, and the legitimacy of the systems in which we play roles. Legitimacy is a matter of collective perception, and we have the power to change people's perceptions. — Charles Eisenstein

Government is wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive by its very nature. To get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, government power has to be dealt with. Government's legitimacy has to be challenged. Its claims of success must be refuted. The people who desire peace and prosperity must accept the fact that government and the politicians never deliver peace or prosperity. — Ron Paul

So why don't Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won't be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards. Pg. 293 — Malcolm Gladwell

At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owing to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mating and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet ... He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom. — Barry Unsworth

An Anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition. — Benjamin Tucker

Order always requires a subtle balance of restraint, force, and legitimacy. — Henry Kissinger