Authority Figures Quotes

This was about the time that my opinion of experts, and authority figures in general, began a steady descent that continues to this day. ~ Scott Adams

You should be just as respectful to authority figures and public servants, even if you can now drain them dry. Because your kids are watching you. Also, because it's still illegal to drain authority figures and public servants dry. ~ Molly Harper

Would you really have ... ?" said Julien.
"Almost certainly," I said. "I have deep-seated problems with authority figures."
"But you are one!"
"I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour. ~ Simon R. Green

The most effective weapon a parent has to control a child is the withdrawal of love or its threat. A young child between the ages of three and six is too dependent on parental love and approval to resist this pressure. Robert's mother, as we saw earlier, controlled him by "cutting him out." Margaret's mother beat her into submission, but it was the loss of her father's love that devastated her. Whatever the means parents use, the result is that the child is forced to give up his instinctual longing, to suppress his sexual desires for one parent and his hostility toward the other. In their place he will develop feelings of guilt about his sexuality and fear of authority figures. This surrender constitutes an acceptance of parental power and authority and a submission to the parents' values and demands. The child becomes "good", which means that he gives up his sexual orientation in favor of one directed toward achievement. Parental authority is introjected in the form of a superego, ensuring that the child will follow his parents' wishes in the acculturation process. In effect, the child now identifies with the threatening parent. Freud says, "The whole process, on the one hand, preserves the genital organ wards off the danger of losing it; on the other hand, it paralyzes it, takes its function away from it. ~ Alexander Lowen

All I'm being offered now are parts that are authority figures. I've done that. And that's not what I want. I want something different. ~ Yaphet Kotto

More than that, these adverts sell a dubious world view. They sell the idea that science is not about the delicate relationship between evidence and theory. They suggest, instead, with all the might of their international advertising budgets, their Microcellular Complexes, their Neutrillium XY, their Tenseur Peptidique Végétal and the rest, that science is about impenetrable nonsense involving equations, molecules, sciencey diagrams, sweeping didactic statements from authority figures in white coats, and that this sciencey-sounding stuff might just as well be made up, concocted, confabulated out of thin air, in order to make money. They sell the idea that science is incomprehensible, with all their might, and they sell this idea mainly to attractive young women, who are disappointingly under-represented in the sciences. ~ Ben Goldacre

You will not remember much from school.

School is designed to teach you how to respond and listen to authority figures in the event of an emergency. Like if there's a bomb in a mall or a fire in an office. It can, apparently, take you more than a decade to learn this. These are not the best days of your life. They are still ahead of you. You will fall in love and have your heart broken in many different, new and interesting ways in college or university (if you go) and you will actually learn things, as at this point, people will believe you have a good chance of obeying authority and surviving, in the event of an emergency. If, in your chosen career path, there are award shows that give out more than ten awards in one night or you have to pay someone to actually take the award home to put on your mantlepiece, then those awards are more than likely designed to make young people in their 20's work very late, for free, for other people. Those people will do their best to convince you that they have value. They don't. Only the things you do have real, lasting value, not the things you get for the things you do. You will, at some point, realise that no trophy loves you as much as you love it, that it cannot pay your bills (even if it increases your salary slightly) and that it won't hold your hand tightly as you say your last words on your deathbed. Only people who love you can do that. If you make art to feel better, make sure it eventually makes you feel better. If i ~ Pleasefindthis

We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it's easy to lay the blame at their feet. Ultimately, however, we are responsible for choosing the authority figure we defer to. Choosing to defer to one who urges aggression against others still puts the responsibility on us. ~ Mary J. Ruwart

One clear-cut fact does, however, emerge: placebos, prescribed for a paranoid schizophrenic by his authority referent, had served to inhibit for approximately two or three months, not imaginary pains, but somatic ones. This finding is probably the most striking of all the findings reported herein for either Joseph or Leon. It demonstrates most dramatically the positive effects which can be achieved by suggestions originating with the paranoid schizophrenic's own delusional authority figures. This finding is all the more remarkable when one remembers that paranoid schizophrenics are typically negativistic, that, because they view other people with suspicion and mistrust, they resist suggestions that others make. But our data clearly suggest that paranoid schizophrenics are, like everyone else, quite capable of following positive suggestions when they originate with positive referents. In this respect, the major difference between normal people and paranoid schizophrenics lies not so much in the fact that the schizophrenics are less suggestible but in the fact that they have no positive authorities or referents in the real world; if they have any at all, these positive referents exist only in the world of their delusions. ~ Milton Rokeach

Our parents, our tribesman, our authority figures, clearly expect us to be bad or anti-social or greedy or selfish or dirty or destructive or self-destructive. Our social nature is such that we tend to meet the expectations of our elders. Whenever this reversal took place and our elders stopped expecting us to be social and expected us to be anti-social, just to put it in gross terms, that's when the real fall took place. And we're paying for it dearly. ~ Jean Liedloff

[A] people needs to understand what freedom is. We Americans are fortunate that the Founders and their generation possessed that understanding. They knew that freedom, per se, is not enough. They knew that freedom must be limited to be preserved. This paradox is difficult for many students to grasp. Young people generally think freedom means authority figures leaving them alone so they can "do their own thing." That's part of what it means to be free, but true freedom involves much, much more. As understood by our Founders and by the best minds of the young republic, true freedom is always conditioned by morality. John Adams wrote, "I would define liberty as a power to do as we would be done by." In other words, freedom is not the power to do what one can, but what one ought. Duty always accompanies liberty. Tocqueville similarly observed, "No free communities ever existed without morals." The best minds concur: there must be borders: freedom must be limited to be preserved.

What kinds of limits are we talking about?
* The moral limits of right and wrong, which we did not invent but owe largely to our Judeo-Christian heritage.
* Intellectual limits imposed by sound reasoning. Again, we did not invent these but are in debt largely to Greco-Roman civilization, from the pre-Socratic philosophers forward.
* Political limits such as the rule of law, inalienable rights, and representative institutions, which we inherited primarily from the British.
* ~ Russell Kirk

I've always respected the authority figures in my life, including my coaches. ~ Richard Seymour

If every day of your life you are told by authority figures that the Earth is flat, you will be scared of falling off the edge whether you want to be or not. ~ Mark Rippetoe

The Catholic Church wants to see child abuse by priests and nuns as simply an issue of some very bad priests and nuns. What it needs to understand is that the nature of religion compounded the problem. It allowed priests to have a status that placed them above suspicion. It fostered a myth that celibacy meant purity. It had schools that enforced authority by beating children and taught that authority figures should not be questioned. Men like Smyth and Steele will have understood the esteem in which priests were held and seen themselves as untouchable. They had every reason to, as the Catholic Church did a great deal to defend and enable them. ~ Noel McGivern

Source credibility is one contributing factor that seems to influence change. People have a tendency to look up to authority figures for knowledge and direction. Expert opinion is effective in establishing the legitimacy of change and is tied to information control. Once a source is accepted on one issue, another issue may be established as well on the basis of prior acceptance of the source. The analyst looks for an audience's perceived image of the source. How does the audience regard the source? Are the people deferential, and do they accept the message on the basis of leadership alone? Is the propaganda agent a hero? Does the audience model its behavior after the propagandist's? How does the propagandist establish identification with the audience? Does she or he establish familiarity with the audience's locality, use local incidents, and share interests, hopes, hatreds, and so on? ~ Garth S. Jowett

How could I admit that the All-American Girl's force field of stoicism and self-reliance and do-unto-others-and-keep-smiling wasn't working, wasn't keeping pain and shame and powerlessness away?

From a young age I had learned to get over - to cover my tracks emotionally, to hide or ignore my problems in the belief that they were mine alone to solve. So when exhilarating transgressions required getting over on authority figures, I knew how to do it. I was a great bluffer. And when common, everyday survival in prison required getting over, I could do that too. This is what was approvingly described by my fellow prisoners as 'street-smarts,' as in 'You wouldn't think it to look at her, but Piper's got street-smarts. ~ Piper Kerman

Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents - nurturing, attentive, and overly present (as those teenagers often saw it) authority figures. Today's teenagers and their music rebel against parents because they are not parents - not nurturing, not attentive, and often not even there. ~ Ben Shapiro

I was also beginning to learn about social psychology and the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures, which made me think about how malleable our supposedly strict moral codes become in the right conditions. Something that DIVERGENT grapples with. ~ Veronica Roth

I also discovered how science can go horribly wrong. We can easily become captured by a belief system that is built on a shaky and flawed foundation. How often do we believe in something, not because we have done in-depth research on it, but because authority figures tell us it is the truth? What if what we believe is just an illusion? ~ Suzanne Humphries

Now they call in all of the authority figures they can find and hire them - the cost has gone up. The picture may or may not get better, but definitely, it gets more cumbersome. ~ Don Bluth

I was petrified because all my friends would be going to Washington, DC, to protest. I was sixteen, and I was like, "I don't think I'll be going with you guys," just because I was scared. Then you saw the news, and cops - not students in schools with guns - cops are killing sixteen year old protesters on the news. To me that was more horrifying, to have the authority figures actually killing people on the evening news, than to have another student firing a gun. ~ Gus Van Sant

One of the key psychological characteristics of the Tea Party is its oxymoronic love of authority figures coupled with a narcissistic celebration of its own "revolutionary" defiance. It's this psychic weakness that allows this segment of the population to be manipulated by the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. The advantage is that their willingness to take orders has allowed them to organize effectively (try getting one hundred progressives at a meeting focused on anything). The downside is, they see absolutely nothing weird in launching a revolution based upon the ravings of a guy who's basically a half-baked PR stooge shoveling propaganda coal for bloodsucking transnational behemoths like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. ~ Matt Taibbi

Ms. Grant displays strong anti-establishment sentiments and has an awkward habit of questioning authority figures at all the wrong moments. This, combined with the intelligence she tries to so hard to conceal, makes her something of a liability. ~ Amie Kaufman

The world needs women who stop asking for permission from the principal. Permission to live their lives as they deeply know they often should. I think we still look to authority figures for validation, recognition, permission. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Children have a remarkable talent for not taking the adult world with the kind of respect we are so confident it ought to be given. To the irritation of authority figures of all sorts, children expend considerable energy in "clowning around." They refuse to appreciate the gravity of our monumental concerns, while we forget that if we were to become more like children our concerns might not be so monumental. ~ Conrad Hyers

This conditioning of children to fear nonconformity and blindly obey ensures continued obedience as adults. The difficult task of learning how to make moral choices, how to accept personal responsibility, how to deal with the chaos of human life is handed over to God-like authority figures. The process makes possible a perpetuation of childhood. It allows the adult to bask in the warm glow and magic of divine protection. It masks from them and from others the array of human weaknesses, including our deepest dreads, our fear of irrelevance and death, our vulnerability and uncertainty. It also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to build mature, loving relationships, for the believer is told it is all about them, about their needs, their desires, and above all, their protection and advancement. Relationships, even within families, splinter and fracture. Those who adopt the belief system, who find in the dictates of the church and its male leaders a binary world of right and wrong, build an exclusive and intolerant comradeship that subtly or overtly shuns and condemns the "unsaved." People are no longer judged by their intrinsic qualities, by their actions or capacity for self-sacrifice and compassion, but by the rigidity of their obedience. This defines the good and the bad, the Christian and the infidel. And this obedience is a blunt and effective weapon against the possibility of a love that could overpower the dictates of the hierarchy. In many ways it is love the leaders ~ Chris Hedges

Fame doesn't redeem you. It takes a long time to get there, and when you're finally there, you realise you still have authority figures telling you what to do. ~ Cyndi Lauper

People are so afraid of authority figures and doctors are authority figures. ~ Martha Beck

Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say. You can calmly say, 'Can I first call my mom and ask if I have to do this, please? ~ Mindy Kaling

Authority figures are so irritating. Because they always tell you to do things for reasons that aren't very good. That sums up what authority is about for me. ~ Rupert Everett

Authority figures always attract trouble ~ J.K. Rowling

At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. ~ Seamus Heaney

One characteristic of racism is that children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children. Watching a parent being debased like a child is the deepest shame. I cannot count the number of times I have seen my parents condescended to or mocked by white adults. This was so customary that when my mother had any encounter with a white adult, I was always hypervigilant, ready to mediate or pull her away. To grow up Asian in America is to witness the humiliation of authority figures like your parents and to learn not to depend on them: they cannot protect you. ~ Cathy Park Hong

Self-education through play and exploration requires enormous amounts of unscheduled time - time to do whatever one wants to do, without pressure, judgment, or intrusion from authority figures. That time is needed to make friends, play with ideas and materials, experience and overcome boredom, learn from one's own mistakes, and develop passions. ~ Peter Gray

Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria. ~ Naomi Wolf

You do not know me, but I am a juvenile delinquent. I do not trust authority figures, I probably will not graduate from high school, and statistics say my present rowdiness and vandalism will likely lead to more serious crimes. I am a dangerous fellow, and I am causing mayhem in this store. [ ... ] There. I have now shamelessly destroyed the symmetry of this shelf, undoing hours of labor by underpaid store employees. If you could see me, you would be frightened. ~ Katherine Applegate

We were curious. We went seeking our tribe. And yes, I know there are people who'll say I'm crazy. But just look at those people. Rag, Tag & Bobtail to a man. I'll tell you about them, shall I? They're victims of a conditioning in which authority figures such as parents, teachers, the media, religious leaders, politicians and even their mates – especially their mates actually - define what they think. Their cultural values define their beliefs and ultimately the way they perceive themselves, and so when they call me crazy, I take it as quite a compliment.

My mind, trust me, is deeper than most Rag Tags would ever dare to swim. ~ Karl Wiggins

My only purpose is to teach children to rebel against authority figures. ~ Sherman Alexie

When I was a kid, my parents smartly raised us to keep quiet, be respectful to older people, and generally not question adults all that much. I think that's because they were assuming that 99 percent of the time, we'd be interacting with worthy, smart adults ... They didn't ever tell me 'Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say. ~ Mindy Kaling

A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are. ~ Stephen King

Things weren't permanent, things could always fall apart, never get too comfortable, and even those you trust, those you trust as authority figures and role models, are liable to show themselves as illusions. ~ Michael Hastings

There are many ways in which journalists can mislead a reader with science: they can cherry-pick the evidence, or massage the statistics; they can pit hysteria and emotion against cold, bland statements from authority figures. ~ Ben Goldacre

If you can figure out how to get paid to do something you love, that's the dream. ~ Jon Bernthal

It is an illusion that we were ever alive,
Lived in the houses of mothers, arranged ourselves
By our own motions in a freedom of air.

Regard the freedom of seventy years ago.
It is no longer air. The houses still stand,
Though they are rigid in rigid emptiness.

Even our shadows, their shadows, no longer remain.
The lives these lived in the mind are at an end.
They never were . . . The sounds of the guitar

Were not and are not. Absurd. The words spoken
Were not and are not. It is not to be believed.
The meeting at noon at the edge of the field seems like

An invention, an embrace between one desperate clod
And another in a fantastic consciousness,
In a queer assertion of humanity:

A theorem proposed between the two -
Two figures in a nature of the sun,
In the sun's design of its own happiness,

As if nothingness contained a métier,
A vital assumption, an impermanence
In its permanent cold, an illusion so desired

That the green leaves came and covered the high rock,
That the lilacs came and bloomed, like a blindness cleaned,
Exclaiming bright sight, as it was satisfied,

In a birth of sight. The blooming and the musk
Were being alive, an incessant being alive,
A particular being, that gross universe. ~ Wallace Stevens

We've heard them all talk about Dust, and they're so afraid of it, and you know what? We believed them, even though we could see that what they were doing was wicked and evil and wrong ... We thought Dust must be bad too, because they were grown up and they said so. But what if it isn't? What if it's - '
She said breathlessly, 'Yeah! What if it's really good ... ~ Philip Pullman

The criminal justice system should have the authority to determine the immigration status of all criminals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and report illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal authorities. ~ Susana Martinez

Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust: let not Aristotle's principles be principles to him any more than those of the Stoics or Epicureans. Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured. For if he embraces Xenophon's and Plato's opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom. Let him know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work of his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Hear me now or regret it later: Everything you write must be read aloud. Once all the context items are in place, this is the final test for any written piece...Do not neglect your sense of hearing in the process of writing and reading. As a longtime teacher of English as a foreign language, I can tell you on good authority that you have been listening to the English language at least five or six years longer than you have been writing and reading. And, most probably, your ears also had eighteen or more years of familiarity with the language before you began to read or write with a writer's sensibility. For these reasons, your ears know when things sound okay, good, beautiful, strange, awkward, or just plain bad, before your eye can pick up on such things...Your written voice should burn with the fire of fervent prayer, soothe like a friend's voice during a late-night phone call, alure like a lover's whisper. You must, through your accessible, infinitely read-aloudable voice, make your audience into an insatiable reader of your words. ~ Jiro Adachi

You must demand from each person what that person can give, - the King replied. - Authority is founded first and foremost upon reason. If you order your people to go and jump into the sea, it would start a revolution. It is because my orders are reasonable that I have the right to expect obedience. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The post-Reagan vacuum is doubly curious because Reagan was himself a vacuum (or seems so to this European outsider), an empty stage-set of a personality across which moved cut-out cartoon figures, dragon ladies or demons of the evil empire, manipulated by others far more ambitious than himself. Many people have commented on his complete lack of ideas and his blurring of fiction and reality in his stumbling recall of old movies. But Reagan's real threat is the compelling example he offers to future film actors and media manipulators with presidential ambitions, all too clearly defined ideas and every intention of producing a thousand-year movie out of them. ~ J.G. Ballard

When a big company lays you off, they often give you a year's salary to 'go pursue a dream.' If you're stupid, you panic and get another job. If you're smart, you take the money and use the time to figure out what you want to do next. ~ Bruce Schneier

Big mind is something to express, not something to figure out. Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn't ability that counts, but authority. ~ Barry Hughart

shadow of authority ~ Jane Austen

They know how to think. From the Arabs I have learned one thing: if you are led by Authority, that means you are led by a halter. ~ Adelard Of Bath

Christ alone, and no other redeemer, is the mediator of our salvation. Grace alone, and not any human contribution, saves us. Faith alone, and no other human action, is the instrument by which we're saved. Scripture, and no merely human word, is our ultimate standard of authority. God's glory alone, and that of no creature, is the supreme end of all things. ~ David VanDrunen

A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why. ~ Amy Chua

In the vacuum of authority following the demonstrations' initial success, factions from the pre-uprising period are often in a position to shape the outcome. ~ Henry Kissinger

If you want to be productive, follow leads and dig. Whether it is for oil, gold or information, it requires action - your action. Question authority. Do it yourself. ~ Andrew Saul

Look at the piano. You'll notice that there are white notes and black notes. Figure out the difference between them and you'll be able to make whatever kind of music you want. ~ George Gershwin

I believe that there's a way to question authority with manners, with dignity. There's no reason to be rude about it. ~ Nicolas Cage

In fact, it is because the nature of prayer is so personal and can have such a powerful effect on a community that the government may not use its authority to try to influence an individual's decision whether and when to pray. ~ Barbara Brandriff Crabb

Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. ~ Ruth Padel

Tibetans must take full authority and responsibility for developing industry, looking from all different perspectives, taking care of the environment, conserving resources for long-term economic health, and safeguarding the interests of Tibetan workers, nomads, and farmers. ~ Dalai Lama

I think General Pershing was the most military figure I've ever seen. ~ Frank Buckles

I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world. ~ Dave Matthews

One thing about a police state, you can always find the police. ~ L. Neil Smith

It is the responsibility of each new generation to restore the authority of God in every sphere of life ~ Sunday Adelaja

The naked figures in the landscape have willingly undressed for my camera. They are either perfect beings heroically occupying their Edens, or else they are gardeners after the Fall, lost and exposed to both the elements and the lens. ~ Justine Kurland

I don't like that guy. He calls the cops for everything. ~ Joji Tsubota

This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. ~ William Shakespeare

In the end, love is growing up. We feel so much stronger since we are together in this life, than when we were before trying to figure it out alone. Love is all! ~ Gilles Marini

... for there are times when disobedience heals a very ailing part of the self. It relieves the human spirit's distress at being forced into narrow boundaries. For the nearly powerless, defying authority is often the only power available. ~ Malidoma Patrice Some

Because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process ... no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbours. We do not organise societies that way ... Perhaps we should try. ~ Matt Ridley

I like ideas, frameworks, and figures. ~ Dave Ulrich

In some ways, calm bodily protest has a nakedness to it that may be deeply embarrassing for observers; an act not unlike the bare-faced Oliver Twist effrontery that stands vulnerably before authority, asking for more or better. ~ Michael Leunig

I have to put myself back in the audience's shoes and figure out what they would know and not know. But, there are also times when I do know what's coming up and I maybe need to hint at it, though not in a big way. It's a little bit of both. It's an interesting tightrope to walk. ~ Joseph Trapanese

Survive today. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later. ~ Rick Riordan

It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs, whether I receive them as political testimony or enjoy them as good historical scenes: for it is culturally (this connotation is present in studium) that I participate in the figures, the faces, the gestures, the settings, the actions. ~ Roland Barthes

The disciples were given power and authority because they entered the kingdom and became representatives of the king. They have been given authority to do what Jesus did as part of the ongoing ministry of expanding the kingdom until the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea. We are each called, commissioned, tasked and empowered to do the same things until He returns. ~ Praying Medic

I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty - we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business. ~ William Wilberforce

Democracy saved you from being a slave, now don't try to be someone's master. ~ Amit Kalantri

Most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes that they should be paying. ~ George W. Bush

Before drawing any affirmative conclusions let us first note the absence of the concept of imitation as a general pastoral or moral guideline. There is in the New Testament no Franciscan glorification of barefoot itinerancy. Even when Paul argues the case for celibacy, it does not occur to him to appeal to the example of Jesus. Even when Paul explains his own predilection for self-support there is no appeal to Jesus' years of village artisan. Even when the Apostle argues strongly the case for his teaching authority, there is no appeal to the rabbinic ministry of Jesus. Jesus' trade as a carpenter, his association with fishermen, and his choice of illustrations from the life of the sower and the shepherd have through Christian history given momentum to the romantic glorification of the handcrafts and the rural life; but there is none of this in the New Testament, which testifies throughout to the life and mission of a church going intentionally into the cities in full knowledge of the conflicts which awaited here there. That the concept of imitation is not applied by the New Testament at some of those points where Franciscan and romantic devotion has tried most piously to apply it, is all the more demonstration of how fundamental the thought of participation in the suffering of Christ is when the New Testament church sees it as guiding and explaining her attitude to the powers of the world. Only at one point, only on one subject - but then consistently, universally - is Jesus ~ John Howard Yoder

And these trajectories all have one thing in common: we no longer have to obey what the New Testament teaches. We can devise our own ideas about the direction things were heading at the end of the New Testament, even ideas that contradict direct New Testament commands. This method has no controls on it. It is subjective, and the final authority is not the Bible but anyone's guess as to where the trajectory was heading. ~ Wayne A. Grudem

Our founders understood that divine authority was necessary in order to establish a ground on which the weak, the defenseless, the powerless, the poor and the wretched would be able to stand, in the face of every human power whatsoever, and demand respect for their human rights and dignity. ~ Alan Keyes

I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions. ~ Elena Kagan