#authority

Put two or three men in positions of conflicting authority. This will force them to work at loggerheads, allowing you to be the ultimate arbiter. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#arbiter #authority #conflicting #force #men

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#am #authority #because #being #believe

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority. ↗

— Hu Shih

#authority #breakdown #mean #old #revolutions

...But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative—the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is meant to support some political movement or ideology. All fiction reinscribes the problematic past in terms of the present, and, if it is significant at all, reckons with it instead of simply making it palatable or pretty. What aesthetic is adequate to the Holocaust, or to the recent tragedy in Haiti? Narrative is not exculpatory—it is in fact about culpability, about recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us. If we’re to say anything important, we require an art less facile, and editors willing to seek it. ↗

— Michael Copperman

#authority #culpability #race #representation #art

[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews? ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #decay #end-of-the-world #genocide #god-s-wrath

When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird. ↗

— Rosemary Clement-Moore

#politeness #family

You understand Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes. ↗

— Astrid Lindgren

#etiquette #humor #humor

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. ↗

— William H. Seward

#constitution #devotes #domain #higher #law

Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#intelligence #intelligence

We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love. ↗

— Jean Vanier

#authority #peace #power #love