Authority Quotes - Page 19

• Many young men in the 1960s and 1970s came to reject some of the traditional ideas about manhood that many of their fathers tried to pass down - like unquestioning respect for authority even when that might mean killing and dying for questionable or unjust causes such as the Vietnam War.

  Jackson Katz

  Father, War, Mean

  "Fathers, Sons and Guns : An Interview With USC Sociologist and Author Michael Messner". Interview with Jackson Katz, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 31, 2011.

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• Modern schools and universities push students into habits of depersonalized learning, alienation from nature and sexuality, obedience to hierarchy, fear of authority, self-objectification, and chilling competitiveness. These character traits are the essence of the twisted personality-type of modern industrialism. They are precisely the character traits needed to maintain a social system that is utterly out of touch with nature, sexuality and real human needs.

  Arthur Evans

  Real, School, Character

  Arthur Evans (1978). “Witchcraft and the Gay counterculture: a radical view of Western civilization and some of the people it has tried to destroy”, Bookpeople

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• In 1600, when Shakespeares audience at the Globe heard Hamlet for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant to be handed a cup of wine by a figure of authority and told to drink.

  Neil MacGregor

  Wine, Cups, Firsts

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• Lebanese freedom of speech : You get to say whatever you like as long as the authorities approve of it... Hilarious.

  Ziad K. Abdelnour

  Long, Freedom Of Speech, Lebanese

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• We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power; that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

  Barbara Jordan

  Believe, People, Source

  1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 12 July 1976, New York, NY

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• I like writing flawed women, and being one, its something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

  Callie Khouri

  Writing, Feels, Flawed

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• The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they wish to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Children, Book, School

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• The idea of a hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally, that the only person who would have enough authority to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself.

  John Gerstner

  Jesus, Reality, Punishment

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• My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.

  Halldór Laxness

  Morning, Giving Up, Son

  "Independent People" by Halldór Laxness, translated by J. A. Thompson, published by Vintage Books, (Book Two), 1997.

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• Whether they are raised in indigenous or modern culture, there are two things that people crave: the full realization of their innate gifts, and to have these gifts approved, acknowledged, and confirmed. There are countless people in the West whose efforts are sadly wasted because they have no means of expressing their unique genius. In the psyches of such people there is an inner power and authority that fails to shine because the world around them is blind to it.

  Malidoma Patrice Some

  Mean, Unique, Psych

  Malidoma Patrice Somé (1999). “The healing wisdom of Africa: finding life purpose through nature, ritual, and community”, J P Tarcher

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• Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.

  Ayn Rand

  Answers, Obedience, Defiance

  Ayn Rand (1984). “Philosophy: Who Needs It”, p.200, Penguin

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• My library is my kingdom, and here I try to make my rule absolute-shutting off this single nook from wife, daughter and society. Elsewhere I have only a verbal authority, and vague. Unhappy is the man, in my opinion, who has no spot at home where he can be at home to himself-to court himself and hide away.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Daughter, Home, Men

  Michel de Montaigne (1956). “Autobiography: Comprising the Life of the Wisest Man of His Times ...”

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• And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Poetry

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and on credit.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Trust, Truth, Taken

  Michel de Montaigne (1603). “Essayes”

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• When men have appreciated the countless differences which the exercise of that judgment must necessarily produce, when they have estimated the intrinsic fallibility of their reason, and the degree in which it is distorted by the will, when, above all, they have acquired that love of truth which a constant appeal to private judgment at last produces, they will never dream that guilt can be associated with an honest conclusion, or that one class of arguments should be stifled by authority.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Dream, Exercise, Men

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1870). “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, p.72

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• Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Blood, Europe, Atheism

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky (2001). “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, p.40, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• [T]he bill exceeds the rightful authority to which governments are limited by the essential distinction between civil and religious functions, and violates in particular the article of the Constitution of the United States which declares that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.... This particular church, therefore, would so far be a religious establishment by law, a legal force and sanction being given to certain articles in its constitution and administration.

  James Madison

  Religious, Law, Government

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• Because the bill vests in the said incorporated church an authority to provide for the support of the poor and the education of poor children of the same, an authority which, being altogether superfluous if the provision is to be the result of pious charity, would be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.

  James Madison

  Religious, Children, Agency

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• How a regulation so unjust in itself, so foreign to the authority of Congress, and so hurtful to the sale of public land, and smelling so strongly of an antiquated bigotry, could have received the countenance of a committee is truly a matter of astonishment.

  James Madison

  Land, Hurtful, Atheism

  James Madison (1867). “1769-1793”, p.154

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• The Book of Revelation has all the authority, in these theological uplands, of military orders in time of war. The people turn to it for light upon all their problems, spiritual and secular.

  H. L. Mencken

  Spiritual, Military, War

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• Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Lying, Selfish

  John Stuart Mill (1950). “Utilitarianism, liberty, and representative government”

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• Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?

  John Calvin

  Scary, Copernicus, Venture

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• Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities. Instead God sent them a spiritual leader to rescue them from their sins.... He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death.

  Paul Weyrich

  Spiritual, Leader, Scary

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• The world needs women who stop asking for permission from the principal. Permission to live their lives as they deeply know they often should. I think we still look to authority figures for validation, recognition, permission.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Thinking, Validation, Needs

  "Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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• I don't want to use the term "nuclear weapons" because those people in Iran who have authority say they are not building nuclear weapons. I make an appeal to the countries who do have nuclear weapons. They don't consider them a nuclear threat. But let's say a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons gets involved in building them, then they are told by those that already have nuclear weapons that they oppose [such a development]. Where is the justice in that?

  Recep Tayyip Erdogan

  Country, Iran, People

  "Bashar Is Politically Dead". Interview with Lally Weymouth, www.slate.com. September 20, 2012.

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