Authorities Quotes
More Authorities Quotes
We're agreed that child sexual imagery is a case apart, it's illegal everywhere in the world, there's a consensus on that. It's absolutely right that we identify this stuff, we remove it and we report it to the authorities.
— Peter Barron, one of Google's Communications, quoted on BBC News, "Google and Microsoft agree steps to block abuse images", November 18, 2013.
We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists "of conspiring to teach [us] to do", but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.
dorothy day— "On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (September 1956)
Unfortunately, catastrophes or scandalous disclosures always have to happen before humanity realises that it is only its own mistakes that have led it into misfortune. These are all the more difficult to rectify, because in the main they have been made by the authorities, who will not commit suicide themselves, but in order to save their own skins, they would rather that all Life should perish before they acknowledge their errors.
viktor schauberger— Viktor Schauberger, 1933 - Implosion Magazine, No. 2, p. 23. (Callum Coats: The Fertile Earth)
If civil authorities legislate for or allow anything that is contrary to that order and therefore contrary to the will of God, neither the laws made or the authorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens, since God has more right to be obeyed than man.
— 1963 Pacem in Terris,10 Apr.
In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when everyact of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.
john reed— 1919 Ten DaysThat Shook theWorld, ch.3.
Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities — the political, the religious, the educational authorities — who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing — forming in our minds — their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.
timothy leary— How to Operate Your Brain (1994), a guided meditation spoken by Timothy Leary and set to music.
The meaning of the First Amendment has been, and will be, shaped by each American generation: by judges, political leaders, citizens. There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment.… But I am convinced that the fundamental American commitment to free speech, disturbing speech, is no longer in doubt.
anthony lewis— Lewis, Anthony (2007). Freedom for the Thought That We Hate; A Biography of the First Amendment. Basic Books. p. xv. ISBN 0465039170.
Dear rulers ... I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. ... If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.
Martin Luther— Martin Luther, 1524, letter to the German rulers quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896.
During my imprisonment in the Soviet Union, I often heard of an imprisoned Swedish diplomat who had been active in Budapest. The Russian authorities were said to have accused him of espionage for the Germans.
wilhelm mohnke— Quoted in "Raoul Wallenberg: The Mystery Lives on" - Page 198 - by Harvey Rosenfeld - 2005
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.
hashemi rafsanjani— Rafsanjani: the U.S. Sold Biological and Chemical Weapons to Saddam Hussein. Elections in Iraq Were Held against America's Will February 2005
The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.
barbara tuchman— p. 590 (A Distant Mirror (1978))
The Lebanese security authorities and the remnants of the Syrian system in Lebanon, and directly the Syrian regime from top to bottom, is responsible for every crime and every drop of blood spilled.
gebran tueni— June 2, 2005, following the assassination of colleague Samir Kassir
The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.
nikolai vasilievich gogol— Act I, sc. i
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.
jürgen habermas— p.27 (The structural transformation of the public sphere, 1963/1991)
It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite.
nassim nicholas taleb— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan (2007), p. xxvii, footnote
All submit to them where they sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis in the soul, Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions, They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves, and touches themselves; For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception.
walt whitman— In "Tests" (1860) in the "Autumn Rivelets" section of the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass.
I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any governmental authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city, a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.
— Walter Burley Griffin, talking of his plan for Canberra, 1912, from The New York Times, Sunday, June 2, 1912
Our thesis now is that the Portuguese seafarers and scientists of the 15th and 16th centuries made an important contribution to the rise of modern science by unintentionally undermining the belief in scientific authorities and by strengthening the confidence in an empirical, natural, historical method.
— Reijer Hooykaas, "The Portuguese Discoveries and the Rise of Modern Science" in Selected Studies in History of Science (1983)
I need hardly say that I am always anxious to hear if there be any American decisions bearing upon the question before me, not because they are binding authorities upon me, but in order that I may get the very assistance which I have over and over again derived from the decisions of accomplished Judges, who are dealing with what is very much the same law as our own.
— Brett, L.J., The Queen v. Castro (1880), L. B. 5 Q. B. D. 616.
I am bound to administer the law here according to the best construction that I can put upon the intent and meaning of the authorities applicable to the cases before me.
— Lord Langdale, M.R., Carpmael v. Powis (1845), 9 Beav. 19.
Year-books, books written of the law of England, and judgments in Parliament, are three of the authorities, and they are thesauri aperti . Judicial records and precedents are the fourth, and they are thesauri absconditi .
— Lord Coke, Case of the Marshalsea (1612), 10 Rep. 75.
Lord Chief Justice Gibbs used to say that he could get authorities in the Year-Books for any side in any thing.
— Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Chancellor, said in the course of the argument of a celebrated case of the House of Lords: Gray v. The Queen (1844), 11 Clark & Finnelly, 441.
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
— Matt Groening, Life in Hell
Cases before the Railway Commissioners must not be cited as authorities to us.
— Bramwell, L.J., Great Western Rail. Co. v. Railway Commissioners (1881), 50 L. J. Q. B. 489.
This is the first time authorities helped me escape prison.
— Who: George Sitts, convicted murderer before his electrocution in 1947 in South Dakota
We must accord great respect and consideration to the judgments of the military authorities who are on the scene and who have full knowledge of the military facts.... At the same time, however, it is essential that there be definite limits to military discretion.... Individuals must not be left impoverished of their constitutional rights on plea of military necessity that has neither substance nor support.
— Supreme Court Associate Justice Frank Murphy, one of three justices dissenting in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). The Court's six-judge majority supported the interning of Japanese and Japanese-Americans.
