Great Throughts Treasury

"For truth is rightly named the daughter of time, not of authority." - Francis Bacon

"Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason." - Francis Bacon

"Nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much." - Francis Bacon

"The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas." - Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright

"Every great example takes hold of us with the authority of a miracle, and says to us, "If ye had but faith, ye, also, could do the same things."" - Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth that humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo

"Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life." - George Santayana

"In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power an authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies in dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive." - Henry Steele Commager

"The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may; be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale." - James Bryant Conant

"Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation." - James Bryant Conant

"He who would be useful, strong, and happy, must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggardly, and impure streams of thought; and as a wise householder commands his servants and invites his guests, so must he learn to command his desires, and to say, with authority, what thought he shall admit into the mansion of his soul." -

"You are the authority on your own life" - Joan Borysenko

"A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believes things, only on the authority of other without other reason, then, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes heresy." - John Milton

"The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life." - Joseph Joubert

"We must not reject a proven doctrine because it is opposed to some isolated opinion of this or that great authority... No man must surrender his private judgment. The eyes are directed forwards, not backwards." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"Natural law is a practical first principle in the sphere of morality; it forbids evil and commands good. Positive law is a decision that takes circumstances into account and conforms with natural law on credible grounds. The basis of natural law is God, who has created this light, but the basis of positive law is civil authority." - Martin Luther

"A kind of mysterious instinct is supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what other name to give it, has been termed common sense, and more frequently, sensibility; and, by a kind of indefeasible right, it has been supposed, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority from which there is no appeal." - Mary Wollstonecraft

"The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion. Not only to find oneself tyrannized over and outraged is a defeat to this instinct, but in general, to feel oneself over-tutored, over-governed, sate upon (as the popular phrase is) by authority, is a defeat to it." - Matthew Arnold

"To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead as to its own. Such an one can do no deed however small but it is clothed with something of God’s power and authority." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"All temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine authority. But authority is the negation of freedom. God, or rather the fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of mankind will never be complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master is annihilated." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

"Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty." -

"All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"It is an observation no less just than common, that there is no stronger test of a man’s real character than power and authority, exciting, as they do, every passion, and discovering every latent vice." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"The faith that stand on authority is not faith." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Freedom is perhaps the most resonant, deeply held American value. In some ways, it defines the good in both personal and political life. Yet freedom turns out to mean being left alone by others, not having other people’s values, ideas, or styles of life forced upon one, being free of arbitrary authority in work, family, and political life. What it is that one might do with that freedom is much more difficult for Americans to define." - Robert Bellah, fully Robert Neelly Bellah

"What physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favor, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all." - Robert Burton

"Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government, has a monopoly on truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put here for a reason and has something to offer." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Can not one say with authority to the young artist, whether working in stone, in color, in tones, or in character-forms of the novel: So far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused - soul and body, one might say - with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love; that is, the love of all things in their proper relation; unless you are suffused with this love, do not dare to meddle with beauty; unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness; in a word, unless you are suffused with truth, wisdom, goodness, and love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist." - Sidney Lanier

"The improver of knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"“Learn what is true in order to do what is right,” is the summary of the whole duty of man, for all who are unable to satisfy their mental hunger with the east wind of authority." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power." - Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

"Friendship is to be purchased only by friendship. A man may have authority over others, but he can never have their heart but by giving his own." - Thomas Wilson

"No art can conquer the people alone - the people are conquered by an ideal of life upheld by authority." - William Butler Yeats

"Man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d, his glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heave, as make the angels weep." - William Shakespeare

"The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the doubtfulness of all our beliefs. If we certainly knew the truth, there would be something to be said for teaching it. But in that case it could be taught without invoking authority, by means of its inherent reasonableness. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"The essential ingredient of democracy is not doctrine but intelligence, not authority but reason, not cynicism but faith in men, faith in God. Our strength lies in the fearless pursuit of truth by the minds of men who are free." - David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"

"While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking in spite of the majority's opinion." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?" - Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate." - Francis Bacon

"Science, history and politics are not suited for discussion except by experts. Others are simply in the position of requiring more information; and, till they have acquired all available information, cannot do anything but accept on authority the opinions of those better qualified. " - Frank Plumpton Ramsey

"They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth." - Gerald Massey

"Competence without authority is just as impotent as authority without competence." - Gustave Le Bon

"The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

"Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect." - Hyman George Rickover

"Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political. " - Ignazio Silone , original name Secondo Transqulli

"The moderation and toleration of the priests of any sect are in an inverse ratio to its authority and power." - Isidore van Cleef