Authority Quotes

All authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? This wooden frame covered with velvet? No, I am the throne.

Orders and decorations are necessary in order to dazzle the people.

I have only one counsel for you - be master.

In this life we are either kings or pawns, emperors or fools.

If I am often seen at the theatre, people will cease to notice me.

How can you have order in a state without religion? For, when one man is dying of hunger near another who is ill of surfeit, he cannot resign himself to this difference unless there is an authority which declares 'God wills it thus.'

My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Domingue (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world.

It will never be possible for any length of time for any group of the American people, either by reason of wealth or learning or inheritance or economic power, to retain any mandate, any permanent authority to arrogate to itself the political control of American public life.

My respect for human beings is based not on the colour of a man's skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit.

Democracy is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting the rights of other people. Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun. I trust the people, the mass of the people, in almost any country, but I like to make sure that it is the people and not a gang of bandits who think that by violence they can overturn constituted authority.

I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.

When you make your peace with authority, you become authority.

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.