#authority

Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. ↗

— Paul Johnson

#indignation #men

The mathematicians are the priests of the modern world. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#gaede #god #mathematics #peer #physics

There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard. ↗

— John M. Frame

#christianity #logic #religion #the-bible #truth

A king is always a king - and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex ever stand between them and rational converse. ↗

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

#authority #between #converse #ever #her

The man whose authority is recent is always stern. ↗

— Aeschylus

#authority #man #recent #stern #whose

Allen Ginsberg was a world authority on the writing of William Blake, and had an incredible knowledge of classic literature and world politics. ↗

— David Amram

#authority #blake #classic #ginsberg #had

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority. ↗

— Lord Acton

#authority #before #both #country #deny

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority. ↗

— Henri Frederic Amiel

#authority #be true #eloquence #highest #let us

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#challenge #dismantle #domination #freedom #heirarchy

We have one authority and one law and everyone has the responsibility to follow that law and that authority. ↗

— Mahmoud Abbas

#everyone #follow #law #responsibility