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)
We must follow the old authorities and precedents in criminal matters.
coleridge, john, 1st baron coleridge— Queen v. Sowerby (1894), L. R. 2 Q. B. D. [1894], p. 175.
Either we, as a society, decide that copyright is the greater value to society, and take active steps to give up private communications as a concept. Either that, or we decide that the ability to communicate in private, without constant monitoring by authorities, has the greater value - in which case copyright will have to give way.
rickard falkvinge— Wikinews Interview (June 20, 2006)
The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.
julian jaynes— Book II, Chapter 6, p. 313
We passed on the email to the Eastern India Motion Pictures Association. They have informed Lalbazar’s anti-piracy cell. We’ve also informed Bhawani Bhavan and will write to the copyright authorities.
arin paul— On Music Piracy of 10:10(2008)
I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.
robert peel— Speech in the House of Commons (15 March 1839).
The object of this volume is not to cast fresh blame on authorities and individuals, nor is it to expose one nation more than another to accusations of deceit.
arthur ponsonby— First lines of the introduction.
We now have a satisfactory solution not only to coalition forces, but also to the Iraqi authorities themselves.
john prescott— Simon Hoggart, "Prescott triumphs on slippery slopes of syntax", 10 June 10, 2004
— Hansard rendered this as "we now have a satisfactory solution for not only coalition forces, but the Iraqi authorities".
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
mark twain— In revised edition, chapter 78, p. 401, The Autobiography of Mark Twain, 1959, Charles Neider, Harper & Row.
...from the beginning of my sojourn in this world there was a persistent vacancy in me where the industry ought to be. (Ought to was is better, perhaps, though the most of the authorities differ as to this.)
mark twain— p. 46 (Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013))
In a democratic age, only the behavior of the authorities is subject to public criticism; that of the people themselves, never.
anthony daniels— Who Killed Childhood?
I have no doubt that if an actual ticking bomb situation were to arise, our law enforcement authorities would torture. The real debate is whether such torture should take place outside of our legal system or within it. The answer to this seems clear: If we are to have torture, it should be authorized by the law.
alan dershowitz— "Is There a Torturous Road to Justice?", The Los Angles Times, 2001-11-08
Our laws force women into celibacy on the one hand, or abortion on the other. [npg] Both conditions are declared by eminent medical authorities to be injurious to health.
margaret sanger— "Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Upon the best English authorities, yeoman is a title of courtesy.
— Chamberlain, J., Weldon's Case (1795), 26 How. St. Tr. 242.
If they have a strong feeling or indication that the debris belongs to the aircraft, one of the first things authorities will do is drop sonar buoys in the water. If the black box (flight recorder) is there, the buoys should be able to pick up the signals. This could take up to 48 hours but it all depends on how near or far the ships and other assets are.
— Michael Daniel, a former US Federal Aviation Administration official, told Singapore's Straits Times, quoted on BBC News, "MH370: Malaysia Airlines plane search halts overnight", March 20, 2014.
There will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment.
— Lewis, Anthony (2007). Freedom for the Thought That We Hate; A Biography of the First Amendment. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 9780465039173.
— Cited in: Williams, Bill (February 10, 2008). "The majesty of the First Amendment". The Hartford Courant (The Hartford Courant Co.): p. G4; Section: Arts.
We should treat with great respect the opinion of eminent American lawyers on points which arise before us, but the practice, which seems to be increasing, of quoting American decisions as authorities, in the same way as if they were decisions of our own Courts, is wrong. Among other things it involves an inquiry, which often is not an easy one, whether the law of America on the subject in which the point arises is the same as our own.
— Lord Halsbury, L.C., In re Missouri Steamship Company (1889), L. R. 42 C. D. 330.
I also have been struck by the waste of time occasioned by the growing practice of citing American authorities.
— Fry, L.J., id.
I have often protested against the citation of American authorities.
— Cotton, L.J., id.
I have no power to follow the authorities cited to me from the United States if by so doing I were to contravene the law of England.
— Butt, J., The Avon and Thomas Joliffe (1890), L. R. 1 Pro. Div., p. 8.
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
Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us.
— Frances Wright, in Fanny Wright Unmasked by Her Own Pen, 1850, p.5
In former days the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages.
— Leo Tolstoy, Professor Golenishtchev in Anna Karenina, C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 5, Chapter 9, p. 434
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, From "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" In Life In Hell
No open resistance, no organization in opposition to the federal authorities, nothing but the act of a few men who fled to escape being forced into the army &mdash and this is the history of the 'Fishing Creek Confederacy'
— Charles R. Buckalew as quoted in The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance
There was no occupation. There were agreements at the time with the legitimately elected authorities in the Baltic countries.
— Kremlin's European affairs chief Sergei Yastrzhembsky
