Quotes about Authority

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

The saber we've been entrusted to bear is not lifted with our hands; it is raised by our words.

In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent.

No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what the society holds to be true.

If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool.

...the need to overawe people and demand obedience from them is powerful and seductive. It is a part of that world that the kingdom of heaven is not of.

I was made acutely aware how far superior an education that stresses independent action and personal responsibility is to one that relies on drill, external authority and ambition.

Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit. / Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Thanks to technological progress, Big Brother can now be almost as omnipresent as God.