Quotes & Sayings About Power And Authority

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

Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable ... it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked. — Friedrich Hayek

Mary has the authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven. As a reward for her great humility, God gave her the power and mission of assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate angels who fell away through pride. Such is the will of the almighty God who exalts the humble, that the powers of heaven, earth and hell, willingly or unwillingly, must obey the commands of the humble Virgin Mary. — Louis De Montfort

The federal government neither has the power to site transmission lines, nor do we build them. That's done, as people know, in their own communities. The siting decisions and the permitting is done at the local level, or by state governments if it's interstate in nature. And federal government - this is one area we have no authority. — Spencer Abraham

But if a railway in the wilderness is to be a profitable business, if it is even to be possible, if it is to obtain the labour power necessary for its construction and the security necessary for its operational demands, there must be a State authority strong and ruthless enough to defend the interests of the foreign capitalists and even to yield blindly to their interests. — Anonymous

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct. — Idries Shah

The rights of men, that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants, if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power, and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself, which secures an object of such importance ... The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men. — Edmund Burke

The administrative and hierarchic aspects seem to be crucial in the evolution of belief systems. The truth is first revealed to all men, but very quickly individuals appear claiming sole authority and a duty to interpret, administer and, if need be, alter this truth in the name of the common good. To this end they establish a powerful and potentially repressive organisation. This phenomenon, which biology shows us is common to any social group, soon transforms the doctrine into a means of achieving control and political power. Divisions, wars and break-ups become inevitable. Sooner or later, the word becomes flesh and the flesh bleeds. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The most dangerous kind of man is not the one who spent his youth shoving others around. That kind of man gets lazy, and is often too content with his life to be truly dangerous. The man who spent his youth being shoved around, however ... When that man gets a little power and authority, he often uses it to become a tyrant on par with the worst warlords in history. — Brandon Sanderson

And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand.
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.
Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tattered clothes great vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend - none, I say, none. I'll able 'em.
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal th' accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes,
And like a scurvy politician seem
To see the things thou dost not. — William Shakespeare

[Satan] has been thoroughly defeated and only holds people by usurped authority and power. — Chuck Smith

Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced - in a word, insane. — Frank Herbert

Every human act had a power behind it, every power had an authority, and every authority had a purpose-dirty bombs constituted by free will and amended by angelic and demonic influence unto the driving of humanity-it was very much active directing. ~RUIN Katara Aggelos — Lucian Bane

When we speak of power, we mean man's control over the minds and actions of other men. By political power we refer to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large. — Hans J. Morgenthau

The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows. — Roy Moore

The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such calculated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered. — Howard Zinn

Cultivate these, then, for they are wholly within your power: sincerity and dignity; industriousness; and sobriety. Avoid grumbling, be frugal, considerate, and frank; be temperate in manner and speech; carry yourself with authority. — Marcus Aurelius

He then who rashly judges his brother; shakes off the yoke of God, for he submits not to the common rule of life. It is then an argument from what is contrary; because the keeping of the law is wholly different from this arrogance, when men ascribe to their conceit the power and authority of the law. It hence follows, that we then only keep the law, when we wholly depend on its teaching alone and do not otherwise distinguish between good and evil; for all the deeds and words of men ought to be regulated by it. — John Calvin

When we see the need for deep change, we usually see it as something that needs to take place in someone else. In our roles of authority, such as parent, teacher, or boss, we are particularly quick to direct others to change. Such directives often fail, and we respond to the resistance by increasing our efforts. The power struggle that follows seldom results in change or brings about excellence. One of the most important insights about the need to bring about deep change in others has to do with where deep change actually starts. — Robert E. Quinn

There are no term limits on His reign. He has always been King and He always will be King. There is no death that threatens the perpetuity of His sovereign authority. There is no usurping of power by a lesser rival to His throne. There are no coups, no revolutions (at least, none that succeed). There is no threat of impeachment. He is a King who rules eternally. — Sam Storms

Every man who truly loves a woman, and every woman who truly loves a man, hopes and dreams that their companionship will last forever. But marriage is a covenant sealed by authority. If that authority is of the state alone, it will endure only while the state has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction ends with death. But add to the authority of the state the power of the endowment given by Him who overcame death, and that companionship will endure beyond life if the parties to the marriage live worthy of the promise. — Gordon B. Hinckley

There is a great deal of quarrelling in the houses, and contending for power and authority; and the second wife is against the first wife, perhaps, in some instances. — Heber C. Kimball

This emerges clearly in the gospels, where Jesus's "authority" consists both in healing power and in a different kind of teaching, all of which the gospel writers - and Jesus himself - understood as part of the breaking-in of God's Kingdom. — N. T. Wright

His secretary heard Lincoln authoritatively remind a caller on November 15 that "this government possesses both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity." Here was Jacksonian firmness to spare. "That, however, is not the ugly point of this matter," Lincoln added grimly. "The ugly point is the necessity of keeping the government by force, as ours ought to be a government of fraternity. — Harold Holzer

The official government radio station was still broadcasting that the New York Power Authority would have power back up to Con Edison and lower Manhattan — Matthew Mather

The earthly father is a God-given mnemonic device to remind us of the glory of the heavenly Father. The shepherd is a mnemonic device to remind us of God's care for his own. The snow is meant to remind us of the Lord's purity and holiness. The storm is a mnemonic device to remind us of God's power and wrath. The daily rising sun is a mnemonic device to remind us of God's faithfulness. We're literally surrounded by gracious reminders of the presence, power, authority, and character of God because he designed created things to function mnemonically. He knows how quickly and easily we forget and how vital it is for us to remember, so he embedded reminders everywhere we look in his creation. — Paul David Tripp

The privilege of holding the priesthood, which is the power and authority to act in God's name, is a great blessing and privilege and one that carries with it equally great obligations and responsibilities. — Ezra Taft Benson

Power is not a thing to be owned. But if you believe that it is such a thing, losing it becomes a possibility to fear. That fear, I think, is one reason for the dark projections of a catastrophic future that are so widespread, in our dual society. The present powerful, being committed to polarization, expect that any new deal will overturn the one that set them in authority; that the last shall be first and the first last, role reversal everywhere, men as slaves, women as masters, in a revolution of contradiction. — Elizabeth Janeway

There is no stronger test of a person's character than power and authority, exciting as they do every passion, and discovering every latent vice. — Plutarch

There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived. — Henry David Thoreau

The Holy Ghost bears witness to us of the truth and impresses upon our souls the reality of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, so surely that no earthly power or authority can separate us from that knowledge. — James E. Faust

Politics becomes even more of a magnet for self-aggrandizing sociopaths and liars than it already tends to be by nature, and men with no meaningful political power or authority waste their time and energy trying to convince complete strangers to convert to their way of thinking, even when those strangers have different group identities, different religious beliefs, and completely incompatible or opposing ideas about what is good or "best in life. — Jack Donovan

When I started to learn how to read, I discovered the same kind of power. I could create an environment that I didn't have, and I could order this environment in the way that I couldn't in my actual life. Then, when I learned to write, I learned that I could do this not only for myself, but for other people. I could create whole things that were believable, at least to myself, at that point. And in this way, I began to wield an authority and a power that I had not had before. In other words, every child goes through this. Some pick football and some pick the library. I picked the library. — Donald Richie

Because let's talk about power. In the domestic polity, myth dictates that parents are endowed with a disproportionate amount of it. I'm not so sure. Children? They can break our hearts, for a start. They can shame us, they can bankrupt us, and I can personally attest that they can make us wish we were never born. What can we do? Keep them from going to the movies. But how? With what do we back up our prohibitions if the kid heads belligerently for the door? The crude truth is that parents are like governments: We maintain our authority through the threat, overt or implicit, of physical force. — Lionel Shriver

I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say 'We eat the chicken now!' but the magus had seen that I was considering it ...
"My purse is full enough," said the magus, "to keep you supplied with roast chickens."
"So, so, so," I said. "We know who the power behind the throne is," and the magus laughed.
"You eat more than Gen did after prison," he said.
"I have more sympathy with him all the time. Are you going to finish that drumstick?" I asked.
"I am. Stop staring at it. — Megan Whalen Turner

in the field of ethics, of moral knowledge, it was approached by Kant with his principle of autonomy. This principle expresses his realization that we must not accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the basis of ethics. For whenever we are faced with a command by an authority, it is for us to judge, critically, whether it is moral or immoral to obey. The authority may have power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist. But if we have the physical power of choice, then the ultimate responsibility remains with us. It is our own critical decision whether to obey a command; whether to submit to an authority. — Karl R. Popper

Empower me to be a bold participant, rather than a timid saint in waiting, in the difficult ordinariness of now; to exercise the authority of honesty, rather than to defer to power, or deceive to get it; to influence someone for justice, rather than impress anyone for gain and, by grace, to find treasures of joy, of friendship, of peace hidden in the fields of the daily you give me to plow. — Ted Loder

No power of earth, or hell, men or devils, can possibly stand against the word of God; and hence it is the very height of folly and wild madness for any one to set up his thoughts or reasonings in opposition to the plain statements of Holy Scripture; and, on the other hand, it is the beginning and end of all true wisdom to submit in all things to the absolute authority of that Word which is settled forever in Heaven. — Charles Henry Mackintosh

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors. — Gary Hamel

We'll have a public power authority, which will also have the ability to build power or finance power. And more importantly, we'll have more power than our economy provides. All of that will give us leverage we don't have today. — Gray Davis

If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever. — G.K. Chesterton

As long as a man knows very well the strength and weaknesses of his teaching, his art, his religion, its power is still slight. The pupil and apostle who, blinded by the authority of the master and by the piety he feels toward him, pays no attention to the weaknesses of a teaching, a religion, and soon usually has for that reason more power than the master. The influence of a man has never yet grown great without his blind pupils. To help a perception to achieve victory often means merely to unite it with stupidity so intimately that the weight of the latter also enforces the victory of the former. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government. — Walter Lippmann

The priesthood holds consummate power. It can protect you from the plague of pornography-and it is a plague-if you are succumbing to its influence. If one is obedient, the priesthood can show how to break a habit and even erase an addiction. Holders of the priesthood have that authority and should employ it to combat evil influences. — Boyd K. Packer

What the poet has to say to the torso of the supposed Apollo, however, is more than a note on an excursion to the antiquities collection. The author's point is not that the thing depicts an extinct god who might be of interest to the humanistically educated, but that the god in the stone constitutes a thing-construct that is still on air. We are dealing with a document of how newer message ontology outgrew traditional theologies. Here, being itself is understood as having more power to speak and transmit, and more potent authority, than God, the ruling idol of religions. In modern times, even a God can find himself among the pretty figures that no longer mean anything to us - assuming they do not become openly irksome. The thing filled with being, however, does not cease to speak to us when its moment has come. — Peter Sloterdijk

Things external to her may have their own weight and dimension: but within inside us she gives them such measures as she wills: death is terrifying to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, consciousness, authority, knowledge, beauty and their opposites doff their garments as they enter the soul and receive new vestments, coloured with qualities of her own choosing: brown or green; light or dark; bitter or sweet, deep or shallow, as it pleases each of the individual souls, who have not agreed together on the truth of their practices, rules or ideas. Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything, the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour, on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea. — Michel De Montaigne

We think that we live in a heterosexual society because most men are fixated on women as sexual objects; but, in fact, we live ina homosexual society because all credible transactions of power, authority, and authenticity take place among men; all transactions based on equity and individuality take place among men. Men are real; therefore, all real relationship is between men; all real communication is between men; all real reciprocity is between men; all real mutuality is between men. — Andrea Dworkin

The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called "aesthetic dignity." One — Harold Bloom

Your ego's job isn't to serve you. Its only job is to keep itself in power. And right now, your ego's scared to death cuz it's about to get downsized. You keep up this spiritual path, baby, and that bad boy's days are numbered. Pretty soon your ego will be out of work, and your heart'll be making all the decisions. So your ego's fighting for its life, playing with your mind, trying to assert its authority, trying to keep you cornered off in a holding pen away from the rest of the universe. Don't listen to it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Prayer is the risen Jesus coming in with His resurrection power, given free rein in our lives, and then using His authority to enter any situation and change things. — Ole Hallesby

Omnipotence is a status that is fragile at best. By its very own standard meaning of unlimited power, unlimited authority, unlimited presence, and unlimited meaning; it still follows within its own realm of self-defeat, being overwhelmingly defeated, unlimited defeat, being crippled, being negated, being surpassed, being unable to do, and etc. And of course, one can twist metalogic, add in paradoxes, add in metapotence, but it's usually as a means to maintain the belief of something so high, that it cannot be reached. Unfortunately, it's been reached, and it has been defeated by finite conditions. — Lionel Suggs

We may first observe that communism and socialism
which we shall hereafter group together and dub Statism
cannot live with Christianity nor with any religion that postulates a Creator such as the Declaration of Independence recognizes. The slaves of Statism must know no power, no authority, no source of blessing, no God, but the State ... — J. Reuben Clark

Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable. — George Bernard Shaw

There is a meltdown of authority going on in the world and a corresponding increase of lawlessness. The earth itself is also going through travail to give birth to the messengers of power who are sent to prepare the way for the coming of the kingdom by preaching the gospel of the kingdom throughout the earth. — Rick Joyner

1951. Law is a rule of conduct enacted by competent authority for the sake of the common good. The moral law presupposes the rational order, established among creatures for their good and to serve their final end, by the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. All law finds its first and ultimate truth in the eternal law. Law is declared and established by reason as a participation in the providence of the living God, Creator and Redeemer of all. — The Catholic Church

There were many empresses and queens in power throughout the world. It is said that these legendary women ruled judicially, and that they brought about a most remarkable amity among kingdoms and the nations that surrounded them. And as for subjects, well, you've never heard a single instance of revolt, have you? Indeed not, for these women were supreme leaders, and one of the greatest mysteries in history is that they lost their power. I suppose it had something to do with a male heir, somewhere or other, who bored by such a peaceful existence,thought it might be more interesting if the question of authority were decided by brute force. — Nancy Madore

Our Father in Heaven loves all of His children and desires that they know and understand His plan of happiness. Therefore, He calls prophets, those who have been ordained with power and authority to act in God's name for the salvation of His children. They are messengers of righteousness, witnesses of Jesus Christ and the infinite power of His Atonement. They hold the keys of the kingdom of God on earth and authorize the performance of saving ordinances. — Carol F. McConkie

What is the secret of Stalin's unquestioned strength? He controls every wheel and screw of the party machine, which is the source of authority and power in the Soviet Union. — Louis Fischer

He was regarded merely as an eccentric employee of indifferent merit, and his post of deputy chief clerk was the highest he would ever reach. Well aware of this, he made it a rule never to show any zeal, except in special circumstances. It is true that in these cases his zeal was clothed with a spirit of vengeance directed against the whole human race - this being his second favourite occupation. Petitbidois would have liked to hold the reins of power. This being beyond his sphere, he utilized the small driblets of authority which came his way for the purpose of casting ridicule upon established law and order, by making it act as a sort of unintelligent and, if possible, malicious Providence. 'The world is an idiot place anyway,' he would say, 'so why worry? Life is just a lottery. Let us leave the decision to chance. — Gabriel Chevallier

Jesus lived as a supernatural man. Although He is God, He divested himself of His own power and authority and operated under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, just as we do. Our goal is to become like Him. It is the relationship we have with Christ in the Spirit that opens us up to the revelation and experiences of the supernatural. It is only the transforming presence and power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to walk like Jesus did. To walk in the Spirit is to have a relationship with Him. This is why I believe relationship is preferable to realm in thinking about the kingdom of God. — Praying Medic

There are reasons to have rules and regulations. That I understand. Authority is a different thing. Authority is to maintain its own position by increasing its power and domination over those people it is supposedly protecting. — James Cromwell

So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money. — Lysander Spooner

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

In further institutionalizing the great power of the majority, we are making the individual come to distrust himself. We are giving him a rationalization for the unconscious urging to find an authority that would resolve the burdens of free choice. We are tempting him to reinterpret the group pressures as a release, authority as freedom, and that this quest assumes a moral guise makes it only the more poignant. — William H. Whyte

The danger of pride
I see increasingly how difficult it is to exercise authority in a community. We are so inclined to want authority for the honour, prestige and admiration that comes with it. Inside each of us is a little tyrant who wants power and the associated prestige, who wants to dominate, to be superior and to control. We are frightened of criticism. We feel we are the only ones to see the truth - and that, sometimes, in the name of God ... So the community becomes 'our' project.
... And Christians can sometimes hide these tendencies behind a mask of virtue, doing what they do for 'good' reasons. There is nothing more terrible than a tyrant using religion as his or her cover. I know my own tendencies toward this and I have to struggle against them constantly. — Jean Vanier

Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold; nor is lust a defect in bodies which are beautiful and pleasing: it is a sin in the soul of the one who loves corporal pleasures perversely, that is, by abandoning that temperance which joins us in spiritual and unblemishable union with realities far more beautiful and pleasing; nor is boastfulness a blemish in words of praise: it is a failing in the soul of one who is so perversely in love with other peoples' applause that he despises the voice of his own conscience; nor is pride a vice in the one who delegates power, still less a flaw in the power itself: it is a passion in the soul of the one who loves his own power so perversely as to condemn the authority of one who is still more powerful. — Augustine Of Hippo

True gospel authority, the authority to heal and renew things and people, is not finally found in a hierarchical office, a theological argument, a perfect law, or a rational explanation. The Crucified revealed to the world that the real power that changes people and the world is an inner authority that comes from people who have lost, let go, and are re-found on a new level. — Richard Rohr

Many people confuse authority and the power of efficiency, as if the first role of people with responsibility is to take decisions, command effectively and so exercise power. But their role first of all is to be a person to whom others can turn for help and advice, to provide security, to affirm, to support, to encourage and to guide. — Jean Vanier

Extravagant sartorial display had a purpose. It created the impression of wealth and power on the opponent and pride in the wearer which has been lost sight of in our nervously egalitarian times. — Barbara W. Tuchman

For that was mom's trump card: she was the mother, and so possessed a mysterious and unquestioned authority. Dad was the boss, but Mom was the power. — Joyce Carol Oates

If a dog on a leash does not run off, no one will regard him as a loyal companion on the basis of this fact alone. No reasonable individual will speak of love if a man sleeps with a defenseless woman who is virtually chained hand and feet. No one, unless he is a real scoundrel, will be proud of a woman's love gained by financial support or by power. No decent person will accept love that is not given voluntarily. The compulsory morality of marital obligations and familial authority is a morality of cowards and impotent people who are afraid of life, people who are incapable of experiencing, through the power of natural love, what they try to produce for themselves with the help of marital laws and the police. — Wilhelm Reich

Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world, while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you. — Caroline Myss

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear. — Gustave Le Bon

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno

No doubt that anarchist ideas are frightening to those in power. People in power can tolerate liberal ideas. They can tolerate ideas that call for reforms, but they cannot tolerate the idea that there will be no state, no central authority. So it is very important for them to ridicule the idea of anarchism to create this impression of anarchism as violent and chaotic. It is useful for them. — Howard Zinn

If in the middle of an air raid God sends out the gospel call to his kingdom in baptism, it will be quite clear what that kingdom is and what it means. It is a kingdom stronger than war and danger, a kingdom of power and authority, signifying eternal terror and judgment to some, and eternal joy and righteousness to others, not a kingdom of the heart, but one as wide as the earth, not transitory but eternal, a kingdom that makes a way for itself and summons men to itself to prepare its way, a kingdom for which it is worth while risking our lives. - — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When you're not fully trusting in the Lord you're concerned mostly about rescue. "I'm a Christian, get me out of here!" And the Lord is saying, "You're kidding, right? I want to teach you who you are in this situation!" In some of our situations, He gives us power and authority to move. In other situations He gives us patience because that works just as powerfully, it's just going to take a few extra weeks. — Graham Cooke

Authority is not power; that's coercion. Authority is not knowledge; that's persuasion, or seduction. Authority is simply that the author has the right to make a statement and to be heard. — Herman Kahn

For what is known of God is evident among them: for God revealed Himself to them. 20. For the unseen things, both His eternal power and divine authority, from His creation of the world, are seen clearly, being understood by His works. so they are without excuse. 21. Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but their thoughts became directed to worthless things and their foolish hearts and minds became covered in darkness. 22. Although they claim to be wise they were made foolish — Anonymous

If any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people by his own authority and without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government. — John Locke

Some of the politicians in this country, in their feverish search for group acceptance, are ready to endorse tumultuous confrontation as a substitute for debate, and the most illogical and unfitting extensions of the Bill of Rights as protections for psychotic and criminal elements in our society. We have seen all too clearly that there are mennow in power in this countrywho do not represent authority, who cannot cope with tradition, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support revolution as long as it is done with a cultured voice and a handsome profile. — Spiro T. Agnew

THE VIOLENCE OF early modernity was expressed nowhere more purely or on a grander scale than in the international and internecine conflicts of the period, which custom dictates should be called "the wars of religion." Given, though, the lines of coalition that defined these conflicts, and given their ultimate consequences, they ought really to be remembered as the first wars of the modern nation-state, whose principal purpose was to establish the supremacy of secular state authority over every rival power, most especially the power of the church. — David Bentley Hart

You can never give complete authority and overall power to anyone until trust can be proven. — Bill Cosby

To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem. — Llewellyn Rockwell

The evidence never seemed to matter to those in power, who had already made up their minds and did what people typically do when their worldview is threatened by new data: they attacked the messenger. — Sol Luckman

I'm of the age and immaturity level that I cannot give you my respect solely because you are older or ranked higher on an imaginary totem pole. I give you my respect because of your actions. — Erica Goros

I've always had a healthy disregard for authority - it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game. — Platon

Let me then remind you that justice is an immutable, natural principle; and not anything that can be made, unmade, or altered by any human power. It is also a subject of science, and is to be learned, like mathematics, or any other science. It does not derive its authority from the commands, will, pleasure, or discretion of any possible combination of men, whether calling themselves a government, or by any other name. It is also, at all times, and in all places, the supreme law. And being
everywhere and always the supreme law, it is necessarily everywhere and always the only law. — Lysander Spooner

It is an old and wise caution, that when our neighbor's house is on fire, we ought to take care of our own. For tho', blessed be God, I live in a government where liberty is well understood, and freely enjoy'd; yet experience has shown us all that bad precedent in one government is soon set up for an authority in another; and therefore I cannot but think it mine, and every honest man's duty that we ought at the same time to be upon our guard against power, wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects.
I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land, where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations, set on foot by the government, to deprive a people of their right to remonstrating (and complaining too) of the arbitrary attempts of men in power. — Andrew Hamilton

A pine cone cannot fall from a tree unless God is involved. A bumblebee cannot pollenate a flower or sting your arm apart from the will of God. Money cannot enter or exit your bank account apart from the sovereignty of God. Little Ernest cannot be born or be buried in that grave just a half-mile from my house apart from God's will. Legislation cannot be passed in this country or in any other apart from God's sovereignty. You hold this book in your hands because God sovereignly allows you to hold this book in your hands. Everything is under His sovereign rule. Some of us believe that God is a bit like the president. He has a lot of power and authority, but there are checks and balances to limit Him. He is limited by our human choices, the events of the future, the wrongs of the past, or by those who do not believe in Him. Some of His legislations could be vetoed. His popularity can ebb and flow. But God is not like that at all. There are no limits to His rule and power. — Justin Buzzard

I got me slave-girls and slaves.' For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God's? — Gregory Of Nyssa

The infantile dream-state of the mass man is so unrealistic that he never thinks to ask who is paying for this paradise. The balancing of accounts is left to a higher political or social authority, which welcomes the task, for its power is thereby increased; and the more power it has, the weaker and more helpless the individual becomes. — C. G. Jung

of oppressive state power. Gramsci's theory of hegemony as a form of cultural pedagogy is also invaluable as an element of critical educational thought. By emphasizing the pedagogical force of culture, Gramsci expands the sphere of the political by pointing to those diverse spaces and spheres in which cultural practices are deployed, lived, and mobilized in the service of knowledge, power and authority. For Gramsci, learning and politics were inextricably related and took place not merely in schools but in a vast array of public sites. — Henry A. Giroux

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power. — Thomas Szasz

All governments, even these precious "democracies," derive all their power by force. Do something the government doesn't want, like, say, cross the street against the light, refuse to submit to its authority, and it won't be long before they'll use some form of force, usually a weapon and the threat of death or injury, to compel you to comply. — S. Evan Townsend

Tolerance has come to mean that no one is right and no one is wrong and, indeed, the very act of stating that someone else's views are immoral or incorrect is now taken to be intolerant (of course, from this same point of view, it is all right to be intolerant of those who hold to objectively true moral or religious positions). Once the existence of knowable truth in religion and ethics is denied, authority (the right to be believed and obeyed) gives way to power (the ability to force compliance), reason gives way to rhetoric, the speech writer is replaced by the makeup man, and spirited but civil debate in the culture wars is replaced by politically correct special-interest groups who have nothing left but political coercion to enforce their views on others. — J.P. Moreland

The proud cannot accept the authority of God giving direction to their lives. (See Helaman 12:6.) They pit their perceptions of truth against God's great knowledge, their abilities versus God's priesthood power, and their accomplishments against His mighty works. — Ezra Taft Benson

In a toxic system, the toxic minister sets himself or herself up as having a special destiny or mission that can be performed by no one else. This special anointing or calling is often nothing more than the pathological need to be valued or esteemed. It also takes some of the power that should be attributed to God and gives it to the toxic minister. It is a way to usurp God's authority, and it is a way to discredit anyone who disagrees with the direction of the ministry. — Stephen Arterburn

In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts, proclaiming the will authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed by every citizen in public trust. — James Madison

Tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion. — William Shakespeare