If there’s anything mean in a feller, a little authority will bring it out.

—Kin Hubbard

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence, he is just using his memory.

—Leonardo Da Vinci

Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built.

—Erich Fromm

Nothing more enhances authority than silence. It is the crowning virtue of the strong, the refuge of the weak, the modesty of the proud, the pride of the humble, the prudence of the wise, and the sense of fools.

—Charles de Gaulle

The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.

—Alexis de Tocqueville

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.

—James Russell Lowell

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

—Galileo Galilei

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

—Albert Einstein

There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else.

—Cyrus Curtis

The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will. The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm. The boss says “I”; the leader says “we.” The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown. The boss says “go”; the leader says “let’s go.”

—Harry Gordon Selfridge

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

—Stanley Milgram

A leading authority is anyone who has guessed right more than once.                                                                       —Frank A. Clark

Most men, after a little freedom, have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.            

                                                                         —Walter Lippmann

What you need is sustained outrage… there’s far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

– Molly Ivins

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

 —George Carlin