Quotes about Authority

The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are both to be reckoned among their rights.

Such sanguine declarations tend to lull authority asleep,—to encourage it rashly to engage in perilous adventures of untried policy,—to neglect those provisions, preparations, and precautions which distinguish benevolence from imbecility, and without which no man can answer for the salutary effect of any abstract plan of government or of freedom. For want of these, they have seen the medicine of the state corrupted into its poison.

There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive.

You will either fear God or other people. There are no other alternatives.

God's self-revelation is a higher authority than our feelings.

Life in the kingdom isn't easy, at least not when we want to share the throne.

Where everyone is responsible, no one is really responsible.

Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the State.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.