The whole philosophy of modern times is to dissolve distinctions between individuals and deal with them as large collections of people. It's essentially self-interested on the part of authority.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
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 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.
In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.
My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.
Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves - and by which they are willing to be judged.
Authority must be respected and chosen wisely.
To put it mildly, nothing can be turned and worn inside out with greater ease than one's notion of social justice, public conscience, a better future, etc.
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.
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.