Authority Quotes

If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.

If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority.

The decision finally rests not upon appeals to pat authority, but upon what people want.

Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter.

There are very few men that can bear authority if they haven’t been born with the shoulders for it. If you gave a man a nose that never had one, he would be blowing it all day.

Authority… is itself inherently an act of imagination.

All authority belongs to the people.

His (Cardinal Wolsey’s) own opinion was his law. (Henry VIII)

In questions difficult or dangerous, it is indeed natural to repose upon authority, and, when fear happens to predominate, upon the authority of those whom we do not in general think wiser than ourselves.

Authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, that skins the vice off the top. (Measure for Measure)