Authority Quotes

We have erased segregation in those areas of national life to which Federal authority clearly extends. So doing in this, my friends, we have neither sought nor claimed partisan credit, and all such actions are nothing more - nothing less than the rendering of justice.

Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience.

If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

I have only one counsel for you - be master.

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.

Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity.

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.