Authority Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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

Leonardo da Vinci

Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.

I should favour anything that would increase the present enormous authority of women and their creative action in their own homes. The average woman...is a despot; the average man is a serf.

G. K. Chesterton

Unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and lift us from the dark to the bright mountain of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy, to him be power and authority for ever and ever.

Authority is not a quality one person 'has,' in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.

Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgement, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence.

The Secretary General, in a very real sense, is the servant of the General Assembly. Diminish his authority and you diminish the authority of the only body where all nations, regardless of power, are equal and sovereign. Until all the powerful are just, the weak will be secure only in the strength of this Assembly.

John F. Kennedy

Lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

Authority exercised with humility, and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.

Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools. To speak is to... dissipate one's strength; whereas what action demands is concentration. Silence is a necessary preliminary to the ordering of one's thoughts.

Charles de Gaulle

It Is narrated on the authority of Abu Malik: I heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: He who professed that there is no god but Allah and made a denial of everything which the people worship beside Allah, his property and blood became inviolable, an their affairs rest with Allah.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.

Henry David Thoreau

The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe, because the corrupting of the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth, and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price.

Thomas Jefferson

I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State's authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.

I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.

The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless.

We do not believe that if you cut back what government does you diminish its authority. On the contrary, a government that did less, and therefore did better, would strengthen its authority.

Margaret Thatcher

A child who passes through many hands in turn, can never be well brought up. At every change he makes a secret comparison, which continually tends to lessen his respect for those who control him, and with it their authority over him. If once he thinks there are grown-up people with no more sense than children the authority of age is destroyed and his education is ruined.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.

George Bernard Shaw

A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are.

Riots were also the most virulent symptoms to date of another, and in some ways graver, national disorder—the decline in respect for public authority and the rule of law in America. Far from being a great society, our is becoming a lawless society.

I repeat that in this sense the most splendid court in Christendom is provincial, having authority to consult about Transalpine interests only, and not the affairs of Rome. A praetor or proconsul would suffice to settle the questions which absorb the attention of the English Parliament and the American Congress.

Henry David Thoreau

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.