This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I see nothing wrong in the practice of a person who, knowing more than others in a specific game of truth, tells those others what to do, teaches them and transmits knowledge and techniques to others. The problem in such practices where power which is not in itself a bad thing must inevitably come into play is knowing how to avoid the kind of domination effects where a kid is subjected to the arbitrary and unnecessary authority of a teacher, or a student is put under the thumb of a professor who abuses his authority. I believe this problem must be framed in terms of law, rational techniques of government and ethos, practices of the self and freedom.
Authority | Government | Knowing | Knowledge | Nothing | Play | Power | Practice | Self | Wrong | Government |
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
Authority | Conscience |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i.e., the emancipation of nations and men.
Authority | Enemy | Evil | Friend | Humanity | Liberty | Means | Nations | Patriotism | Regard | Unity |
Molly Ivins, fully Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins
The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not with authority, but with ourselves.
Authority | Bible | Logic | Bible | Koran | Old Testament | Old |
A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal.
Authority | Government | Government |
Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The government of Rome was admirable. From its birth, abuses of power could always be corrected by its constitution, whether by means of the spirit of the people, the strength of the senate, or the authority of certain magistrates.
Authority | Government | Means | Power | Spirit | Strength | Government |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.
Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune. The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. It is neither useful to the master nor to the slave; not to the slave, because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master, because by having an unlimited authority over his slaves he insensibly accustoms himself to the want of all moral virtues, and thence becomes fierce, hasty, severe, choleric, voluptuous, and cruel. ... where it is of the utmost importance that human nature should not be debased or dispirited, there ought to be no slavery. In democracies, where they are all upon equality; and in aristocracies, where the laws ought to use their utmost endeavors to procure as great an equality as the nature of the government will permit, slavery is contrary to the spirit of the constitution: it only contributes to give a power and luxury to the citizens which they ought not to have.
Absolute | Authority | Equality | Government | Human nature | Life | Life | Luxury | Man | Nature | Nothing | Power | Right | Slavery | Spirit | Will | Government |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to.
Authority | Inequality |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
The man fitted for affairs and authority never considers individuals, but things and their consequences.
Otto Rank, born Otto Rosenfeld
We are born in need of authority and we even create out of freedom, a prison.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Experts often arrive at different results, both in fundamental matters, and in application who does not know of at least one case in his family where one doctor recommends a certain operation, another argues against it, while a third suggests an entirely different procedure? Who has not read of the debates about nuclear safety, the end of the economy, the effects of pesticides, aerosol sprays, the efficiency of methods of education, the influence of race on intelligence? Two, three, five and even more views arise in such debates, and scientific supporters can be found for all of them. Occasionally one almost feels inclined to say: as many scientists, as many opinions. There are of course areas in which scientists agree- but this cannot raise our confidence. Unanimity is often the result of a political decision: dissenters are suppressed, or remain silent to preserve the reputation of science as a source of trustworthy and almost infallible knowledge. On other occasions, unanimity is the result of shared prejudices: positions are taken without detail examination of the matter under review and are infused with the same authority that proceeds from detailed research.
Authority | Efficiency | Family | Influence | Race | Reputation | Science |
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Language became a colorless and as indistinct as the business suit which is now worm by everyone, by the scholar, by the businessman, by the professional killer. Being accustomed to a dry and dreary norm and sees in it an obvious sign of arrogance and aggression; viewing authority with almost religious awe he gets into a frenzy when he sees someone pluck the beard of his favorite prophet.
Some benefit has not failed to flow from the imperfect attempts which have been made to erect a system of equal rights to property and power upon the basis of arbitrary institutions. They have undoubtedly, in every case, from the instability of their foundation, failed. Still, they constitute a record of those epochs at which a trite sense of justice suggested itself to the understandings of men, so that they consented to forego all the cherished delights of luxury, all the habitual gratifications arising out of the possession or the expectation of power, all the superstitions with which the accumulated authority of ages had made them dear and venerable. They are so many trophies erected in the enemy's land, to mark the limits of the victorious progress of truth and justice.
Authority | Expectation | Instability | Justice | Power | Progress | Property | Rights | Sense | System | Truth | Expectation |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
Authority | Cooperation | Knowledge | Means | Obedience | Responsibility | Thought | Thought |
No mistake is more to be deplored than the conception that a system of morals and religion should derive any portion of its authority either from the circumstance of its novelty or its antiquity, that it should be judged excellent, not because it is reasonable or true, but because no person has ever thought of it before, or because it has been thought of from the beginning of time.
Authority | Beginning | Mistake | Novelty | Religion | System | Thought | Novelty | Circumstance | Thought |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
But it is not enough to destroy. We must also know how to build, and it is owing to not having thought about it that the masses have always been led astray in all their revolutions. After having demolished they abandoned the care of reconstruction to the middle class people, who possessed a more or less precise conception of what they wished to realize, and who consequently reconstituted authority to their own advantage.