Authority Quotes - Page 22

• I am not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnic homogeneous neighborhoods.

  Jimmy Carter

  Government, People, Use

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• Authority is conferred by position, not character.

  Mason Cooley

  Character, Position

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• Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Book, Opposites, Church

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• Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive.

  Ron Paul

  War, Responsibility, Army

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• God created the first pair equal in rights, possessions, and authority. He bequeathed the earth to them as a joint inheritance; gave them joint dominion over the irrational creation; but none over each other.

  Antoinette Brown Blackwell

  Equality, Rights, Inheritance

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• I speak "with absolute certainty" only so far as my own personal belief is concerned. Those who have not the same warrant for their belief as I have, would be very credulous and foolish to accept it on blind faith. Nor does the writer believe any more than her correspondent and his friends in any "authority" let alone "divine revelation"!

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Believe, Doe, Would Be

  Collected Writings, Volume XI, p. 466, www.katinkahesselink.net. October 1889.

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• If our courts lose their authority and their rulings are no longer respected, there will be no one left to resolve the divisive issues that can rip the social fabric apart ... The courts are a safety valve without which no democratic society can survive.

  Rose Bird

  Rip, Issues, Safety

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• The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.

  William J. Brennan

  Religious, Exercise, Government

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• The peace conference must not adjourn without the establishment of some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees.Unless a league something like this results at our peace conference, we shall merely drop back into armed hostility and international anarchy. The war will have been fought in vain.

  Virginia Gildersleeve

  Peace, War, Government

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• Bricks will be most serviceable if made two years before using; for they cannot dry thoroughly in less time. When fresh undried bricks are used in a wall, the stucco covering stiffens and hardens into a permanent mass, but the bricks settle and the motion caused by their shrinking prevents them from adhering to it, and they are separated from their union with it. At Utica in constructing walls they use brick only if it is dry and made five years previously, and approved as such by the authority of a magistrate.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Wall, Years, Two

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book II, Chapter III, Section 2,

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• This democracy... The elections in Iraq were held despite the American opposition. It was the will of the Iraqi people and the religious authorities. [The elections] were the result of pressure by Ayatollah Sistani, by the Iraqi religious authorities, and by the fighting forces in Iraq on America. They left the US no choice but to allow the elections.

  Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

  Religious, Fighting, Iraq

  "Rafsanjani: the U.S. Sold Biological and Chemical Weapons to Saddam Hussein. Elections in Iraq Were Held against America's Will". MEMRI TV, February 2005.

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• Much as I venerate the name of Newton, I am not obliged to believe that he was infallible. I see ... with regret that he was liable to err, and that his authority has, perhaps, sometimes even retarded the progress of science.

  William P. Young

  Regret, Believe, Names

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• You may cut off the heads of every rich man now living--of every statesman--every literary, and every scientific authority, without in the least changing the social situation. Artists, of course, disappeared long ago as social forces. So did the church. Corporations are not elevators, but levellers, as I see them.

  Henry Adams

  Cutting, Artist, Power

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.523, Harvard University Press

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• After forty years, with whatever authority comes from lived experience, I can say: You, too, can create something. You can nurture it and watch it grow.

  Sy Safransky

  Years, Watches, Nurture

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• Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ignorance, Twenties, Finals

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1997). “The Major Prose of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.66, University of Georgia Press

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• We are not final because we are infallible, but infallible only because we are final.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Law, Justice, Honor

  Brown v. Allen (concurring opinion) (1953)

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• To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

  Jean Francois Revel

  Democracy, Principles, Definitions

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• That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.

  John Marshall

  Government, People, Fabric

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• Folks, we're starting to learn more and more about that man arrested in the New York SUV car bombing case. His name is Faisal Shahzad. He's from Pakistan. What tipped off the authorities he might be the bomber? His name is Faisal Shahzad. He's from Pakistan.

  Jay Leno

  New York, Men, Names

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• Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

  P. D. James

  Children, Brave, Secret

  P. D. James (2007). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.20, Vintage

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• Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Leadership, Responsibility, Equality

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• Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Humble, School, Eye

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• Force was the factor in the government of the world when Christ was born, and force was the source and exercise of authority both by Church and State when Columbus sailed from Palos. The Wise Men traveled from the East toward the West under the guidance of the Star of Bethlehem. The spirit of the equality of all men before God and the law moved westward from Calvary with its revolutionary influence upon old institutions, to the Atlantic Ocean. Columbus carried it westward across the seas.

  Chauncey Depew

  Wise, Stars, Ocean

  Chauncey Depew “The columbian oration delivered at the dedication ceremonies of the World's fair at Chicago, Oct. 21, 1892”

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• The most famous self-made man in the world today is our own Edison. Talk with Mr. Edison and he will tell you he owes much if not most of his success to omnivorous reading. Forbes is one of his favorite publications. How closely he reads it can be gathered from a letter just received from him in which he asks the editor to forward a long analytical letter to the writer of a series of articles which contained two figures Mr. Edison questions, and he wants to know exactly on what authority or investigation they were based. Both letters were the product of Mr. Edison and were signed by him.

  B. C. Forbes

  Reading, Science, Men

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• Can those entrusted with the gravest authority set any example save that of the sternest obedience to the law?

  Calvin Coolidge

  Leadership, Law, Example

  Calvin Coolidge (1920). “Law and Order”

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