authority quotes

   The vices of authorityare chiefly four: delays, corruption, roughness, and facility.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'.

It's funny: you hate authorityand thenyour photography takes on an authority.

- Colin Baker
In The Mail on Sunday,14 Oct.

You will soon hate me as much as you love me now, for you assume an authority in the affairs of the church to which I shall never assent.

-Thomas a'  , Saint Becket
c.1160  Remark to Henry II. Quoted in J R Green  A Short History of the English People (1915), vol.1, ch.2, section 8.

I earn it by enjoying such authorityand prestige that people will not buy expensive Italian pictures without myapproval.

- Bernard Berenson
Comment on his income, addressed to the Internal Revenue Service. Quoted in The Making of a Legend (1987).

The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and myservant shall be healed.For Iama man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man,Go, and he goeth; and to another,Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed,Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 8:8^10.

A journalist ishardlyanauthorityuponanythingunless perhapsupontheappraisal of the drift of public opinion.

-JohnW Dafoe
  Convocation address at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, May. Quoted in Murray Donnelly Dafoe of the Free Press (1968).

They, who would combat general authority with particular opinion, must first establish themselves a reputation of understanding better than other men.

-John Dryden
  'The  Author's  Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic Licence', an essay prefacing State of Innocence, a libretto based on Paradise Lost.

He was my crowned King, and if the Parliamentary authority of England set the crown upon a stock, I will fight for that stock: And as I fought then for him, I will fight for you, when you are established by the said authority.

-Norfolk
  Explaining before the future Henry VII his reasons for siding with Richard III at Bosworth, 22  Aug. Quoted in William Camden Remains Concerning Britain (1605).

Yes, they say, go and write whatever story you want, but don't use whatever language is necessary† By implication those in authority ask the writer to censor and suppressheror his ownwork.Theydemand it.If you don't comply then your work isn't produced.

-James Kelman
  Some Recent  Attacks,'The Importance of Glasgow in My Work'.

My culture and my language have the right to exist, and no one has the authority to dismiss that.

-James Kelman
  Speech at the Booker Prize award ceremony,11 Oct.

The authority of a belief imposed by religion surely destroys the discovery of reality.One relies on authority because one is afraid to stand alone.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti
  BBC interview,7 Dec.

If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,if you did not come inonthewife'sside,if youdid not sneak intothehouse in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before their courtship was so much as thought on,look about you† Every long friendship, every old authentic intimacy, must be brought into their office to be new stamped with their currency, as a sovereign Prince calls in the good old money that was coined in some reign before he was born or thought of, to be new marked and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he will let it pass current in the world.

- Charles Lamb
  Essays of Elia,'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'.

[Jeremy] Bentham held no post at the mercy of bankers and tripe sellers; he was a man of independent means, a lawyer and politician and a heretic in general practice. It is impossible to imagine such a man occupying a chair at Harvard or Princeton.Hehad a hand intoomany pies; he was too rebellious and contumacious; he had too little respect for authority, either academic or worldly. Moreover, his mind was too wide for a professor; he Mencken could never remain safely in a groove; the whole field of social organization invited his inquiries and experiments.

- H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken
  'The Dismal Science', in The Smart Set,  Jun.

A king has no dignity when he exercises authority over beggars, only when he rules over prosperous and happy subjects.

- SirThomas More
  Utopia (English translation1556), bk.1.

If I was an aspirant litterateur, I was also an aspirant anarchist. I have disliked Authority always, though sometimes seduced by its resplendence.

-Jan formerly James Morris Morris
  A Writer's World:  Travels1950^2000, prologue.

Authority forgets a dying king.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'The Passing of Arthur', l.289.

The function of literature through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and thehigh authorityof theself in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.

- Calvin Marshall Trillin
  Beyond Culture, introduction.

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The record is fragmentary, inconsistent and uncertain† But there can be no doubt as to the elements in the record that have evoked the best in human nature. The Mother, the Child and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self- forgetful, with his message of peace, love and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.

- Alfred North Whitehead
 Adventures of Ideas.

A king is always a kingand a woman always a woman; his authorityand her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse.

- Mary also known as Mrs Godwin Wollstonecraft
  AVindication of the Rights ofWoman, pt.1, ch.4.