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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.
Authority is mainly a moral power; therefore, it must first call upon the conscience, that is, upon the duty that each person has to contribute willingly to the common good.
Authority is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily distrusts the things which he and all men have been always bred up to.
Authority must be respected and chosen wisely.
I've had a contemptuous relationship with authority throughout my life. I found myself at odds with authority, and I'm disdainful of blind authority.
Authority figures are so irritating. Because they always tell you to do things for reasons that aren't very good. That sums up what authority is about for me.
Authority has to exist before it can be limited, and it is authority that is in scarce supply in those modernizing countries where government is at the mercy of alienated intellectuals, rambunctious colonels, and rioting students.
I've never been any good with authority.
Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.
Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller.