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“We should grant power over our affairs only to those reluctant to hold it, and only under conditions that increase that reluctance.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“When it comes to leadership, influence is more powerful than authority.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

“In our own day, there has been too much of a tendency towards authority, and too little care for the preservation of initiative. Men in control of vast organisations have tended to be too abstract in their outlook, to forget what actual human beings are like, and to try to fit men to systems rather than systems to men.”
― Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual

“Being captain doesn’t mean less work, just a different kind of work. A version of work that puts a lot of responsibility upon the shoulders.”
― Aegelis, X Captain Ruik's Adventure

“If man were forced to prove to himself all the truths he makes use of every day, he would never finish; he would exhaust himself in preliminary demonstrations without advancing; as he does not have the time because of the short span of life, nor the ability because of the limits of his mind, to act that way, he is reduced to accepting as given a host of facts and opinions that he has neither the leisure nor the power to examine and verify by himself, but that the more able have found or the crowd adopts. It is on this first foundation that he himself builds the edifice of his own thoughts. It is not his will that brings him to proceed in this manner; the inflexible law of his condition constrains him to do it.

There is no philosopher in the world so great that he does not believe a million things on faith in others or does not suppose many more truths than he establishes.

This is not only necessary, but desirable. A man who would undertake to examine everything by himself could accord but little time and attention to each thing; this work would keep his mind in a perpetual agitation that would prevent him from penetrating any truth deeply and from settling solidly on any certitude. His intellect would be at the same time independent and feeble. It is therefore necessary that he make a choice among the various objects of human opinions and that he adopt many beliefs without discussing them in order better to fathom a few he has reserved for examination.

It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of another puts his mind in slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that permits him to make good use of his freedom.

It is therefore always necessary, however it happens, that we encounter authority somewhere in the intellectual and moral world. Its place is variable, but it necessarily has a place. Individual independence can be more or less great; it cannot be boundless. Thus, the question is not that of knowing whether an intellectual authority exists in democratic centuries, but only where it is deposited and what its extent will be.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. Vol. 1

“AI can not make you an expert or an authority.
AI can only make you appear to be an expert or an authority.”
― Loren Weisman

“He was a god now, a soldier with a tool that dealt death at the pull of a trigger. A hunter, a leader, strong, and never again the hunted. Never again the victim.”
― Antonio Melonio, Echoes of Tyranny: Freedom Lost

“Like Hammer of the Factory. He, who rose and led us to salvation; he, who was betrayed by Pascal and the other scum; just like him, we shall soar once again and take what is ours! The Tower! The Factory! The valley! Everything!”
― Antonio Melonio, Echoes of Tyranny: Freedom Lost

“We’re on the brink of collapse, my friends! They’ve put us into this mess and now can’t find their way out. Starvation, flooding, cold, and who knows what else. We’re on the edge of extinction! It’s not just about the valley anymore, it’s about our species!”
― Antonio Melonio, Echoes of Tyranny: Freedom Lost

“What we ‘ought’ to desire is merely what someone else wishes us to desire. Usually it is what the authorities wish us to desire — parents, school-masters, policemen, and judges. If you say to me ‘you ought to do so-and-so’, the motive power of your remark lies in my desire for your approval — together, possibly, with rewards or punishments attached to your approval or disapproval. Since all behaviour springs from desire, it is clear that ethical notions can have no importance except as they influence desire. They do this through the desire for approval and the fear of disapproval.”
― Bertrand Russell, What I Believe

“But there is no conceivable way of making people do things they do not wish to do. What is possible is to alter their desires by a system of rewards and penalties, among which social approval and disapproval are not the least potent. The question for the legislative moralist is, therefore: How shall this system of rewards and punishments be arranged so as to secure the maximum of what is desired by the legislative authority? If I say that the legislative authority has bad desires, I mean merely that its desires conflict with those of some section of the community to which I belong. Outside human desires there is no moral standard.”
― Bertrand Russell, What I Believe

“Critical understanding can arise from powerlessness, but does it always do so? Few champions of standpoint epistemology would argue that it does. And, if not, can we allow the experience of powerlessness to be elevated to an inevitable source of political authority?”
― Susan Neiman, Left Is Not Woke

“But I want to make a further claim, one analogous to that made for scientific forestry: the modern state, through its officials, attempts with varying success to create a terrain and a population with precisely those standardized characteristics that will be easiest to monitor, count, assess, and manage. The utopian, immanent, and continually frustrated goal of the modern state is to reduce the chaotic, disorderly, constantly changing social reality beneath it to something more closely resembling the administrative grid of its observations.”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“The more static, standardized, and uniform a population or social space is, the more legible it is, and the more amenable it is to the techniques of state officials. I am suggesting that many state activities aim at transforming the population, space, and nature under their jurisdiction into the closed systems that offer no surprises and that can best be observed and controlled.”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“I suppose you think this is some big fight between youth and experience? Anarchy and authority? People like you always miss the point, Quentin Quire. It's all about "in" versus "out".”
― Grant Morrison, New X-Men, Vol. 4: Riot at Xavier's

“With authority comes responsibility.”
― Daniel Yoder, Unbroken Curses: Hidden Source of Trouble in the Christian’s Life

“Just because someone who is educated and has authority says something doesn't necessarily mean it's true”
― Glena Stephenson

“As you set out on the path ahead, know this—YOU are the spiritual authority in your life. If you want the world to improve, begin with simple steps to improve your life. The whole universe is waiting to co-create with you.”
― Ahriana Platten, Ph.D

“If a person relies too much on authority outside of themselves, it is very easy to lose yourself in that routine. That routine ‘in time’ becomes unconscious and those unconscious beliefs become invisible to the self. These unconscious beliefs then create bridges to a certain kind of understanding, but they also block you from perceiving other possibilities. If that external authority and those unconscious beliefs are never examined, then we can become imprisoned within cages that were created by others.”
― John Kreiter, The Art of Transmutation

“In sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build.”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“If you will not have authority you will find yourself obeying brute force.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Our experience of sovereignty suggests that it becomes dangerous when it defines itself exclusively in terms of what is inferior to it, neglecting or ignoring what is superior to it.
That is to say that sovereignty is a safe concept only when its place is symmetrically defined. Thus, once, the place of humans was thought to be above the animals and below the angels— between the natural and the divine.”
― Wendell Berry

“Those who dwell in the same realm do not worship nor bow to one another.”
― Eduvie Donald

“An urban space where the police are the sole agents of order is a very dangerous place.”
― James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

“Are you working with those that are reflecting authority or generating authority?”
― Loren Weisman

“We can only fortify the child on the positive side by giving him health and humour and a trust in God; not omitting (what will much mystify the moderns) an intelligent appreciation of the idea of authority, which is only the other side of confidence, and which alone can suddenly and summarily cast out such devils.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Selected Essays

“Your authority isn’t a tool for you to generate wealth, build a reputation, or make your way into the spotlight. Your authority isn’t for you.”
― Brandon Michael West, It Is Not Your Business to Succeed: Your Role in Leadership When You Can't Control Your Outcomes

“So whenever men have used their positions of authority or their power to denigrate women, they have denigrated themselves and have denied themselves the fullness of manhood …”
― Eric Metaxas, Seven Women: And the Secret of Their Greatness

“God will be with you. His goodness will stand the test of time and His control will never end. Even when you are at your most vulnerable, God is still on His throne and nothing will move Him for this place of authority.”
― Marc Webb, A Theology of Sleep: Trusting in the Lord When You Are Most Vulnerable

“I continue to take critiques like his seriously, but I will not stop working in Jesus' authority merely because people do not like what I am doing. If I must choose between helping a person to freedom by using approaches not found in Scripture (though not antiscriptural) or else allowing that person to remain in bondage because my approach is not specifically taught in scripture, I choose to help.

The fact that God blesses our efforts so regularly, using them to bring freedom to people in amazing ways, encourages us to continue both ministering and experimenting to find better ways to help people, in spite of the criticism. I take the approach of D.L. Moody, who said, I understand, in response to a person criticizing his evangelistic methods, "I like the way I do it better than the way you don't do it.”
― Charles H Kraft