Top 434 Authority Quotes

The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.

Questioning authority can hardly be called our national pastime. We even make a philosophy out of fear. Fatalism, destiny, karma… are the favourite cultural holes we hide in when authority flogs us. And what’s our tragedy.

When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces when you authorize him to be able to use the forces.

I have said that gymnastics can be abusive and brutal. That was my experience. I felt trapped in a world where authority figures were dictating my future.

I have encountered those who feel that libraries have served their purpose and are no longer needed. There are those who consider them a soft target when it comes to local authority budget cuts. In certain political quarters, there is a refusal to see that our public library service needs active protection.

The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished.

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson in statecraft.

I don’t respond to authority figures who abuse their authority.

I feel like you are allowed in fiction to embrace imagination and try to enter other worlds. And I feel like you should push yourself to try to persuade your reader that you have the authority to engage with people who, you know, lived in the past, who live in the future, other genders, other places, other cultures.

The President sends us a billion-page paper that shows how he would spend the money if he were spending the money. He doesn’t have the authority to spend the money. He doesn’t spend $1 of the money.

A few of Ellison’s short stories from the 1940s and 1950s were widely anthologized over the years. After a while, it became generally known that he was at work on another novel. Though he remained aware ever afterward of the authority ‘Invisible Man’ gave to him, no second novel followed his brilliant debut in 1952.

The United States has never prioritized or failed to pay any obligation when due during a debt limit impasse. Despite the institutional risks and the lack of clear legal authority, we assume that Treasury will attempt to prioritize payments in a last-ditch effort to avoid default.

The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual’s own reason and critical analysis.

The capacity to influence radical groups can diminish significantly once they are viewed as indispensable coalition partners and are able to intimidate the electorate with the authority of the state behind them.

We have seen a degradation from the highest levels of authority politically in this nation, including through the department of justice, for the rule of law.

The police or any higher authority should never try and criminalise people for their sexuality. It is something that is to great extent given by God.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

I’ve always had a healthy disregard for authority – it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.

Scientists and scholars should constitute themselves as an international NGO of exceptional authority.

I was born into a very religious family where everything was about setting the right example for the community and having to obey orders blindly. I felt that everyone was growing up in the world, except me. This is probably one of the reasons why I had such a rebellious attitude towards any form of authority.

Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.

I think the Supreme Court does have the authority, which is not used, to declare a blanket right for all people, all adults.

I’m not a person who likes authority. I just love the fact that it’s up to me, and I go straight to the audience.

God is the King. In him exists all legal authority.

By expanding the legal authority of law enforcement agencies – without addressing the infiltration of white supremacy within law enforcement – we are expanding the capacity of white supremacy itself.

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority.

Does having a wife and kids change your act? Yes, but only in the best way. It gives you weight and authority. It also makes you closer to the audience because the audience is married and has kids.

Congress has the authority to authorize spending and investment to historically neglected and marginalized communities.

I think so many people tend to think of faith as blind adherence to a dogma or unquestioned surrender to an authority figure, and the result is losing self-respect and losing our own sense of what is true. And I don’t think of faith in those terms at all.

Most kids will not volunteer to eat veggies. At times you must step up to the plate and enforce the rule of authority as a parent.

The victory of Hamas is not only based on the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has a vision and a program, and this is the reason why the Palestinian people chose Hamas. However, there is no doubt that the corruption helped Hamas’s victory.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They have worried ever since about keeping it under. Distrust of its powers has been more common and more visible than distrust of the imperial authority of England ever was before the Revolution.

I’m not the authority on the subject. I’m a middle-aged white guy speaking about racism. I’m just finding it a really difficult subject to broach.

We must work harder to lessen inequalities. Only by doing so can we speak with credibility and moral authority to other countries and the People’s Republic of China.

Perhaps this is one of the last remaining strands of my Catholic upbringing, but to me the word ‘worship’ means absolute unquestioning affirmation of the authority of the deity. I’ll not have that in my life. If you are wise, neither will you.

In 1962, the smallest things were upsetting to authority. It wasn’t the Civil Rights Movement. It wasn’t the Anti-war Movement. It was something else, but it was a harbinger of what was to come.

It is crucial that the House exercises its oversight functions to ensure constitutional accountability of government agencies, especially as the bureaucracies associated with ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank flex their muscles and seek to expand their authority.

It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed.

Jesus was a perfect example of following authority. He was subject to His earthly parents; he subjected himself to the laws of the land, and as God, he had the power not to do any of it.

Like George Sand, the feminism of the present day asserts the right of free thought against the creed of authority in every field; the solidarity of mankind and the cause of peace against the patriotism of militarism; social reform against the existing relations of society.

Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we ‘should’ do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority.

The federal government does not have the authority to tell landowners and ranchers and farmers that they can’t farm and ranch their land because someday an endangered species might live there.

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust.

I would say that the money that was invested in me by Warwickshire Education Authority, which they did for five years, has been repaid a hundred times over. I have paid a lot more back to them in tax than they paid in support to me, but they helped me on my way – they launched me; they got me going.

People are always casting me for what they call my ‘authority.’

It’s one of the guiding philosophies of my life – not fearing any authority on earth.

I cannot stand authority.

The ultimate goal is to change Syria’s behaviour on a variety of issues – on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.

Authority is mainly a moral power; therefore, it must first call upon the conscience, that is, upon the duty that each person has to contribute willingly to the common good.

Past experience has shown that the Islamists gain space when civilian authority weakens.

The world isn’t one way or another. Things can be changed very, very rapidly by someone with sufficient confidence, sufficient knowledge and sufficient authority.