c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
To cut off the confusion and accept an answer just because it's too scary not to have an answer is a good way to get the wrong answer.
— Janet Jackson, True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself
Why do I keep thinking of her alluva sudden?! Especially when the only time my face gets red and my heart starts puonding...is when I see him! -Syaoran Li
— CLAMP, Cardcaptor Sakura: Master of the Clow, Vol. 2
There was someone there and they had been there. There was no one there. There was someone there and they had been there and they had not left but there was no one there.
— Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,That he should weep for her?
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet
We just didn't get it. We were weakened and exhilarated at the same time. A paranoiac's nightmare! A narcissist's dream! We didn't know how to feel: flattered or raped. Maybe both. We were puzzling at breakneck speed.
— Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
So, Mr. Mandrake, what is it you plan to do with me this evening?” I asked haughtily. “I presume,” he said, playing along, “that I will start with feeding you proper and then proceed with more…pestiferous acts.”I smiled through the confusion. I’d have to look up that word later.
— Brandi Salazar, Faerie Tales: The Misfortune of a Teenage Socialite
The fog eventually clears itself.
— Marty Rubin
Keep calm when things don’t go according to your expectations! Beautiful things always meet friction!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion.
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
There was another problem with Emma's father, difficult for a small child who already thought of herself as greedy - his way of trying to keep her attention, to bribe her, with gifts. On each vof her visits, he would appear with you presents, beautifully wrapped> And her confusion that she liked - and wanted - the presents, but not the man, was painful. He used 'sparkly Sellotape' and cut things into nice shapes and she wistfully w
— Carol Lee, To Die For
I'm too open minded that I don't know what to mind anymore.
— Ahmed Mostafa
So if you are confused, please remember – don’t help anybody, because your help is going to be poisonous. If you are confused don’t be occupied with others, because you are simply creating trouble, your disease will become infectious. Don’t give advice to anyone, and if you have a little clarity of thought, don’t take advice from someone who is confused. Remain alert, because confused people always like to give advice. And they give it free of charge, they give it very generously!
— Osho, The Empty Boat: Talks on the Sayings of Chuang Tzu
It's like having explosives on board 24/7, the way I feel. I can't believe when I touch things they don't blow to bits. I can't believe I was so way off.I thought, I don't know, I thought wrong.
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
One can't have literary comprehension without real experience, mere grammatical knowledge of the words is useless without recognition of their values, and when you young people want to understand a country and its language you should start by seeing it at its most beautiful, in the strength of its youth, at its most passionate. You should begin by hearing the language in the mouths of the poets who create and perfect it, you must have felt poetry warm and alive in your hearts before we smart anatomizing it.
— Stefan Zweig
I try to focus, but I can't. I know why I'm here, and then I don't know why I'm here. I understand, then I don't. I think it's fair, and then I don't. I wish I'd never done what I'd done, and then I'm glad I did.
— Cecelia Ahern, Flawed
Was that what she meant? Why she cried? Because he was an animal afraid to leave its cage, no words to say what he thought, no thoughts but muddled mad stupid thoughts?
— Laura Kinsale, Flowers from the Storm
Over complication only confuses the essence of things.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is A Cocktail
Fear is a society induced state of confusion.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is A Cocktail
Thus with most careful devotionThus with precise attentionTo detail, interfering preparationOf that which is already preparedMen tighten the knot of confusionInto perfect misunderstanding.
— T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion
When all things go bad, do not think so badly about all things, instead think about the things that made all things went bad and change something!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Surprise is just a paradox. Sometimes it annoys us; sometimes it shakes the tears of joy within us; sometimes it makes us ponder; sometimes it ceases our words and leaves our jaws open, and sometimes, it shuts our lips; for a moment, surprises can put our minds into a state of confusion and halt the movement of the body. Watch out for surprises for surprises are there to surprise you!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
My exclamation mark formed into a question markIt hunched over and second-guessed itselfMaybe life is not so well understoodMaybe life is confusing after all
— Michal Coret, Becoming What I Might Be
Probably it can be a deeper level.. even it can be a part from The Life Of One kid... but what I did... was that I am just going to leave people with confusion as always... The Life of One Kid... has found it's own end... just now breathing... soon It's going to stop breathing.
— Deyth Banger, Care
Something which can make us the same... is what do we use to put somebody in confusion and what does they use to put someone in confusion?
— Deyth Banger
Confusion and hopelessness don't necessarily cause a person to act.
— Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama
But now he felt as if the whole world were tipping backwards over his head, and this, he couldn’t help feeling, was a very worrying thing for the world to do.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don’t exactly know what they are!
— Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
The secret is confusion, make it, create it, live it, be it.
— Chloe Thurlow, Girl Trade
Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Presumably, a confused person would be too addled to recognize that he was confused. Ergo, if you know that you are not confused then you are not confused. Unless, it suddenly occurred to me--and here was an arresting notion--unless persuading yourself that you are not confused is merely a cruel, early symptom of confusion. Or even an advanced symptom. Who could tell? For all I knew I could be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state characterized by fear on the part of the sufferer that he may be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state. That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.
— Bill Bryson
Confusion is a weapon that is used by others to gain a temporary objective or advantage.
— Steven Redhead, Life Is Simply A Game
Are you not tired of yourself? Are you not unhappy about it all? every day is like a monotonous movie, it starts when you wake up and nothing ever happens, no plot twists, no significant words, no stirring eyes, no gladdening words, absolute nothingness, woeful emptiness...and it gets worse and worse, no happy ending is to be witnessed any time soon, only consecutive tragedies, devouring whatever is left of our hearts, harrowing whatever is left in our minds, pushing our thoughts to rift, to strive against one another, as though the mind is a battlefield, and all our thoughts are opponents...my heart and mind and all the battles in between, which side will be the prey at the end?Maybe we will never know and maybe we will, soon enough
— Maisie16
Smith. [Turning eagerly to the Doctor.] But this is rather splendid. The Duke's given £50 to the new public-house.Hastings. The Duke is very liberal.[Collects papers.Doctor. [Examining his cheque.] Very. But this is rather curious. He has also given £50 to the league for opposing the new public-house.Hastings. The Duke is very liberal-minded.
— G.K. Chesterton, Magic: A Fantastic Comedy In a Prelude and Three Acts
All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Either, you are in love with someone or you're not. Fear is complicated, not love.
— Shannon L. Alder
A few steps back is sometimes needed to find clarity in the confusion.
— April Mae Monterrosa
We can’t try to outguess them anymore. Sometimes they do things just to make me do the opposite of what they think I think they think I want to do.”“Huh?” the three of them asked at the same time, confusion transforming their faces.
— James Dashner, The Death Cure
No matter what there always seems to be something clouding my existence, nothing is ever clear.
— Emilyann Girdner, The Labyrinth Wall
The days had become a confusion of catastrophes
—  what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening.
I was tired. Tired of men, tired of moving, tired of being scared, tired of being confused. But who was I kissing? I'm not one to sit quietly, anywhere.
— Deborah Rodriguez, Margarita Wednesdays: Making a New Life by the Mexican Sea
I had nothing to offer anybody except for my own confusion
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Most people living in the world are confused about life.
— Sunday Adelaja
Sometimes I'm in a mood like a Maths problem such as "If you have 4 pencils and 7 apples, how many pancakes will fit on the roof? Purple, because aliens don't wear hats".
— Anonymous
Confusion is like a delusion, it's like a dust covering the mirror of your real potentials and identity followed by your true believe system by turning it out into negative one which make your self image blur so you feel low and dull to perform anything bigger, somehow it kills the fruits of all your efforts unexpectedly, it has ability to blow your flame of passion.....there are a lot of sources you ll find around, stay away from anyone who make you confuse, anything, person, ideology or believe any source that make you feel like that, stay away from it, leave it and live your real life.
— Mohsin Ali Shaukat
For your information, I do love you. Although at times like this I have to wonder why.
— Michelle Celmer, Best Man's Conquest
I needed a moment to understand that I'd been dreaming, that I had come awake, and another moment to remember where I had gone to bed.
— Dean Koontz, Saint Odd
PS…… confused from where you should start planning……. !! Well, start from who you are, where you are and how you are.
— Sameh Elsayed
…the known had been so long dwarfed by the unknown that confusion was an easy bedfellow.
— Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey
We are so confused till a state that we do not know where we are standing ...
— K. Al Balushi
Things are often exactly as they seem. Confusing isn't it.
— Richard Butchins
I can't name just one example. Then there's only one.
— Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp
Her son seemed to be belatedly rebelling against all his celebrated accomplishments- as well as the responsibilities inherent in them, the obligations to own his talents.In that rebellion, she saw a young man who was confused and upset that his life wasn't stacking up to be what he and everyone around him had always assumed it would.
— Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
Grocery shopping was intimidating...the aisles were filled with everything from jumbo to miniature travel-sized rations. Who could I call to ask, “Does the size even matter?” I dare not ask my ex-wife.
— Tez Brooks, The Single Dad Detour: Directions for Fathering After Divorce
I've got to be willing to enter into and do battle with the confusion in order to reach the victory on the other side. It's like, I am here, confusion is in front of me, and just beyond confusion waits the answer or skill I need to take my life in a new and incredible direction.
— Andy Andrews, The Noticer Returns: Sometimes You Find Perspective, and Sometimes Perspective Finds You
A simple solution to a problem could be as complex as a problem to a simple solution.
— Andrew King
Outside, he had a sudden feeling that at moments there was too much light for human eyes. It caused men to feel weak and befuddled.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
I don't know what the hell is going on with me and this girl, but every single time I'm around her, it's like I lose my shit.
— Melyssa Winchester, Count on Me
Suddenly he knew all the things he should have said.
— Erich Maria Remarque, Flotsam
I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider
Peace is nothing but the confusion between two wars
— Peyton J Glenn
I tried to make sense of things. Now that I think about it, I have always tried. It could be my epitaph. LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE.
— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory.
— Percival Everett, I Am Not Sidney Poitier
The course of true love never die run smooth
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.
— Anna Kavan, Ice
I don’t know what more to say... I did not follow up in the days to come. I did not, I did, I should, I could... Just like that, I let that entire ordeal go.
— Phindiwe Nkosi, Behind the Hospital
The Constitution was framed in order to form a more perfect union, not to establish mass confusion.
— Byron Goines, Gun Control
Brilna, meanwhile, had attached a vacant look to her face, one that she applies when confused, a common occurrence, thus a frequent application.
— Michael  Puttonen, Disrupter
You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart
—  imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.
Whaaaaaat is going on?" May whispered out of the corner of her mouth."I'm sort of comforted by the fact that I can't figure it out," Jack responded.
— James  Riley, Twice Upon a Time
I run to the high mountainsI pour my heart out to the skiesI sing of the summer songWhile the sky above dance in the yellow light.The cool breeze fools the sun aboveTakes a run, wins the mighty fight.Your light then comes to me with warmth,A view my heart wants.Love to me is the song you write.The tricks you play with the endless skyAnd with the icy wind you find a disguise.You burn me like sun that burns up In the blue abyss.With the ink of my emotionsYou write a song of Fire and Ice.
— Jaishree Garg
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.
— Fred Allen
...'you have to ask yourself though, who are we to stop a war?’I sigh, wishing that the glittering pinpricks above us were truly stars. It was rare to see any due to the endless cloud cover. ‘Who are we not to?’ I say, to no one in particular. If we weren’t willing to try, then what did that say about us? I try to ignore the pessimistic voice eating away at my thoughts. Change could start with a few, but real change needed thousands.
— H.J. Stephens, When There's No Tomorrow
Like Naokuo, I'm not really sure what it means to love another person. Though she meant it a little differently. I do want to try my best though. I have to, or else I won't know where to go. Like you said before, Naoko and I have to save each other. It's the only was for us to be saved!
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
As long as she persisted in her belief that bafflement justified her actions, she felt confident no one would contradict her.
— Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows
The few moments of heaven were not worth the hell he put me through when he was done.
— Abbi Glines, Just for Now
And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.
— Paul Harding, Tinkers
Bewildered as he might be, sometimes a man's highest calling is simply to stand, and hug.
— Brent Weeks, The Blinding Knife
I am here
—  and here is nowhere in particular.
To die old with a young mind is such a tragedy. Naiveness was never a blessing.
— Shannon L. Alder
...you knew I was confused, tormented, but you enticed me - led me on...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
This put me very close to Jay and it was as uncomfortable as it was mystifying. It was uncomfortable because I still wasn’t sure I liked him all that much. It was mystifying because his intense stares were unlike anything I’d ever experienced; they were hard but soft at the same time, commanding but beautiful.
— Amanda Kelly, Shifting Shadows
Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.
— Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.
— Tacitus
Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.
— Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
— Albert Einstein
Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.
— Timothy Leary
Modern industrial civilisation has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilisation has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits in the classic formulation.Now, it's long been understood very well that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist with whatever suffering and injustice it entails as long as it's possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited: that the World is an infinite resource, and that the World is an infinite garbage-can. At this stage of History, either one of two things is possible: either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community-interests, guided by values of solidarity and sympathy and concern for others; or, alternatively, there will be no destiny for anyone to control.As long as some specialised class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole and, by now, that means the Global Community. The question is whether privileged élites should dominate mass-communication, and should use this power as they tell us they must, namely, to impose necessary illusions, manipulate and deceive the stupid majority, and remove them from the public arena. The question, in brief, is whether Democracy and Freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly-terminal phase of human existence, Democracy and Freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.
— Noam Chomsky
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
— Oscar Wilde
Ravel said. “And I order people around really well. This morning, Tipstaff came over with a cup of tea and I told him no, I don’t want tea I want coffee. That was great. I really asserted my authority.”“Did he go and get you a coffee?”“No, he said he’d already made a pot of tea so I took the tea because, you know he’d already made it, but my authority was still firmly asserted.”Ghastly nodded. “He’ll think twice about making tea again.”“That he will, Ghastly my friend, that he will. What are we looking for, by the way?“Seriously? I gave you the file half an hour ago.”“Yes, you did.”“And did you read it?”“No, I did not.
— Derek Landy, Kingdom of the Wicked
You understand Teacher, don't you, that when you have a mother who's an angel and a father who is a cannibal king, and when you have sailed on the ocean all your whole life, then you don't know just how to behave in school with all the apples and ibexes.
— Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking
Authority, without any condition and reservation, belongs to the nation.
— Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.
— Terry Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
Don't be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I haven't seen it myself. I couldn't prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.
— C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity
Ought one to surrender to authority even if one believed that that authority was wrong? If the answer was yes, then I knew that I would always be wrong, because I could never do it. Then how could one live in a world in which one's mind and perceptions meant nothing and authority and tradition meant everything? There were no answers.
— Richard Wright, Black Boy
Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family, and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch. Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.
— Patrick O'Brian, H.M.S. Surprise
Nice customs curtsy to great kings.
— William Shakespeare, Henry V
But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.
— Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority
People ask me how it happens that my children are all so promptly obedient and so happy. As if it chanced that some parents have such children or chanced that some have not! I am afraid it is only too true, as someone has remarked, that "this is the age of obedient parents!" What then will be the future of their children? How can they yield to God who have never been taught to yield to human authority? And how well fitted will they be to rule their own households who have never learned to rule themselves?
— Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward
What identifies an individual as a king is how other people behave towards him. All authority is assumed, and if other people don't accept your authority then you don't have it. Perhaps the critical thing to being a convincing figure of authority is actually not to try too hard.
— Patrick Stewart
those who will defend authority against rebellion must not themselves rebel.
— J.R.R. Tolkien
[Theseus] soon found himself involved in factions and troubles; those who long had hated him had now added to their hatred contempt; and the minds of the people were so generally corrupted, that, instead of obeying commands with silence, they expected to be flattered into their duty.
— Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives, Vol 1
The anarchist, as the born foe of authority, will be destroyed by it after damaging it more or less. The anarch, on the other hand, has appropriated authority; he is sovereign. He therefore behaves as a neutral power vis-à-vis state and society. He may like, dislike, or be indifferent to whatever occurs in them. That is what determines his conduct; he invests no emotional values.
— Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil
Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
— Paul Johnson, Modern Times
Apostles go into new territory and establish God’s kingdom.
— Sherry K. White, Walking in the Father's Riches: The Prosperity of Sonship
... I could not bank on the phlegmatic Chinese
—  I would have to take care of it myself. This would be safer and also consistent with my own responsibility. The latter is the anarch’s ultimate authority.
Authority is ability to rule. Dominion is rulership.
— Sherry K. White
There was a time where I thought authorities are always right.
— Zybejta Beta Metani'Marashi
The habit of questioning authority is one of the most valuable gifts that a book, or a teacher, can give a young would-be scientist.
— Richard Dawkins, Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist
When the odds are hopeless, when all seems to be lost, then is the time to be calm, to make a show of authority – at least of indifference
— Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty's Secret Service
To lift the authority of the church up is for nations to come to church
— Sunday Adelaja
We unlearn the art of speaking well when we cease to speak with God.
— John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Volume V.1
The crowd was getting hysterical, so I reached into my back pocket and flippe open my wallet to reveal my badge. "Official business," I announced. "Please leave the area." This had the desired effect; it deescalated the mood and prompted most of the crowd to disperse. It's funny what a plastic badge and a meaningless phrase can do. The authority of the police is anothe mass delusion that can be useful at times. I hadn't even needed to claim I was a cop; all it took was a couple of simple cues to invoke the delusion.
— Robert Kroese, The Big Sheep
My name is Richard Werner. Dick. You can call me Dick.
— Ray Palla, H: Infidels of Oil
Behind every unquestionable belief is a system of control.
— Graeme Rodaughan, A Traitor's War
Who is watching the Watchers?
— James Hauenstein
In order that there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or imperative, which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity of chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
If you accept the position of governor, part of your job is to make sure all your people have a decent shot at making something good out of their lives.
— Timothy Zahn, Choices of One
They do sometimes protest...At these times, she sounds authoritative. But she has no authority.
— Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't: Stories
Give the agent something easy to reject, something to justify his authority - that way they won't look too closely at the rest of your things.
— Robert Ferrigno, Sins of the Assassin
At the end of the day, I can't force any of you to treat people the way you should. But it should be on your conscience that whatever law I pass won't do much unless each of you takes it upon yourself to show kindness to your fellow citizens.
— Kiera Cass, The Crown
Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression “it turns out” to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors “I read somewhere that...” or the craven “they say that...” because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it is research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight. Anyway, where was I?
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
Men do recognise at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.
— Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World
She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors.
— Elena Ferrante
The Glory was entrusted to you, you weren't given permission to pass it on as you see fit.
— Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
Today, the mere idea of aristocracy is incompatible with the dominant ideology. But every people needs an aristocracy. It's an integral part of human nature and can't be dispensed with. The question then is not 'For or against aristocracy?' but 'What kind of aristocracy?
— Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight
For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.
— Clifford D. Simak, Time Is the Simplest Thing
For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with "they say" or "don't you know that?" or try (and fail) to rememver the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce
All you need to be recognized as an authority is to be recognized by a recognized authority
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Phineas didn't really dislike West Point in particular or authority in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the backboard which returned all the insults he threw at it.
— John Knowles, A Separate Peace
Marriag
— Lisa Kleypas, Mine Till Midnight
One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.) Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else. This independence of science, its occasional unwillingness to accept conventional wisdom, makes it dangerous to doctrines less self critical, or with pretensions of certitude.
— Carl Sagan
I often hear people talk about how corrupt their politicians are, it makes me laugh because, the very same people who are complaining are just as corrupt. When they get to those same places of authority, they do exactly the same thing for which they were complaining against the previous politicians.
— Sunday Adelaja
Nothing is taken at face value anymore, everything must be dissected. Perhaps it is the rise of advertisement over church and state. Things once spoken were spoken with strength and authority. Now they are spoken with stealth and with guile. They are spoken not to the rational mind but to the sub-conscious, the mind within the mind.
— James Rozoff, Seven Stones
There is no method of self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result – and that is what we all want. We follow authority – if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology – because we want a result that will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system that assures us of a result. But the pursuit of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for certainty, and the result is obviously not the understand of oneself., When we follow a method, we must have authorities – the teacher, the guru, the savior, the Master – who will guarantee us what we desire, and surely that is not the way of self-knowledge. Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
It is noteworthy that at a time when every religious sanction of authority has vanished, we live in a very authoritarian epoch.
— Nikolai A. Berdyaev
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
When the locus of evaluation is seen as residing in the expert, it would appear that the long-range social implications are in the direction of the social control of the many by the few.
— Carl R. Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory
It is in our authority and power to stop torment and sickness and deliver people from vanity.
— Sunday Adelaja
I think you are wrong, partner Elijah. My briefing on human characteristics here among the people of Earth includes the information that, unlike the men of the Outer Worlds, they are trained from birth to accept authority. Apparently this is the result of your way of living. One man, representing authority firmly enough, was quite sufficient, as I proved. Your own desire for a squad car was only an expression, really, of your almost instinctive wish for superior authority to take responsibility out of your hands. On my own world, I admit that what I did would have been most unjustified.
— Isaac Asimov
I daresay that the gradual “decomposition” of scripture, its dissolution in more and more specialized and negative criticism, is a result of its alienation from the eucharist – and practically from the Church herself – as an experience of a spiritual reality. And in its own turn, this same alienation deprived the sacrament of its evangelical content, converting it into a self-contained and self-sufficient “means of sanctification.” The scriptures and the Church are reduced here to the category of two formal *authorities*, two "sources of the faith"--as they are called in the scholastic treatises, for which the only question is which authority is the higher: which "interprets" which.As a matter of fact, by its own logic, this approach demands a further contraction, a further "reduction." For if we proclaim holy scripture to be the supreme authority for teaching the faith in the Church, then what is the “criterion” of scripture? Sooner or later it becomes “biblical science” – i.e., in the final analysis, naked reason. But if, on the other hand, we proclaim the Church to be the definitive, highest and inspired interpreter of scripture, then through whom, where and how is this interpretation brought about? And however we answer this question, this “organ” or “authority” in fact proves to be standing over the scriptures, as an *outside* authority.
— Alexander Schmemann
Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn't based on consensus. It's based on consent. Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. The Marines allowed me to be their commander, and they could revoke their permission at any time.
— Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules, as anyone who has tried to teach simple house rules to a cat will agree.
— Frans de Waal
People respond more to the authority of status, than the authority of truth.
— A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar
Being an authority on paper does not immediately grant you authority over a group until it is earned by you and given by them.
— A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar
Helena, like many women who ruled their own lives, adored being told what to do when there was no obligation to follow the advice given.
— Elizabeth Ironside
Those in authority within institutions and social structures attempt to justify their rule by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with moral symbols, sacred emblems, or legal formulae which are widely believed and deeply internalized. These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the 'votes of the majority,' the 'will of the people,' the 'aristocracy of talents or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings' or to the alleged extraordinary endowment of the person of the ruler himself.
— C. Wright Mills, Character And Social Structure: The Psychology Of Social Institutions
Certainly, a clear line must be preserved by strict discipline, and on the other hand the men must know that everything is done for them that hard times permit. On the top of that it follows that, among real men, what counts is deeds, not words; and then it comes of itself, when such are the relations between men and their leaders, that instead of opposition there is harmony between them. The leader is merely a clearer expression of the common will and an example of life and death. And there is no science in all this. It is a practical quality, the simple manly commonsense that is native to a sound and vigorous race.
— Ernst Jünger, Copse 125: A Chronicle from the Trench Warfare of 1918
The recasting of the Origin Myth as a story about the perils of disobedience precipitated a kind of decoupling of scripture from religious experience: when religious authorities began to insist on the literal truth of scripture, they were effectively promoting a kind of secular rationalism that states that one does not need to have a religious experience of any kind to live a moral life: all one has to do is declare one’s faith in scripture, in the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity and such, and accept the authority of the Holy Catholic Church as God’s representative on Earth.
— Daniel Waterman, Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
You can't come in, colonel," she told him. "You may be in command of your war, but I'm in command of my house.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
You are the authority and the gatekeeper of your own life.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
PATCHES' OF AUTHORITYPreteens Adhere, Teens Challenge, Hideout, Elderly ShunKamil Ali
— Kamil Ali, Profound Vers-A-Tales
God is all powerful.God is mighty.God is has power over all rulers and authorities.
— Laillah Gifty Akita
until he who possesses sapience comes, the one with knowledge shall be the hero
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, Distinctive Footprints of Life: Where Are You Heading Towards?
A person who wields power cannot see truth
—  that is the privilege of the powerless.
Authority in science exists to be questioned, since heresy is the spring from which new ideas flow.
— John C. Polanyi
The ultimate authority of my life is not the Bible
—  it is not confined between the covers of a book. It is not something written by men and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my own soul. Period.
Obligation is a more effective weapon against the Will than any penalty, threat or act of force.
— Ashim Shanker, Sinew of the Social Species
When your authority comes straight from God, shit always turns ugly.
— Matthew Woodring Stover, Caine Black Knife
'And it means naught to you to obey your father's orders? Where is your fealty?' Christian felt his face flush with a surge of bitter rage. 'I keep faith with those who have kept faith with me.' William shook his head in disbelief. 'God save me from ever having sons like you.' 'I would wish it on no man,' Christian said sincerely.
— Eli Easton, The Lion and the Crow
Peterson thought it an unusual friendship, one only the Army could forge.
— David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War
'But even I know that in your line of work, there's a difference between being a volunteer and being volun-told.' 
— T.J. Klune, Burn
Surround yourself with people too afraid to speak, and you left yourself to only your own ideas. That could be disastrous. It was important to have men who would question you and see flaws in your plans, so long as you could control them. It was all about control.
— Brandon Sanderson, Awakening
But I knew something that Elena hadn't. That the measure of a true queen didn't lie in her magic. It had more to do with who she was, and what she was willing to give of herself, than it did with the powers she possessed- Charlaina di Heyse
— Kimberly Derting, The Offering
But the fact that judges follow precedent regularly even though not invariably does not support the legalistic theory as strongly as one might expect. The original precedent in a line of precedents could not have been based on precedent.
— Richard A. Posner, How Judges Think
As we know, Rilke, under the influence of Auguste Rodin, whom he had assisted between 1905 and 1906 in Meudon as a private secretary, turned away from the art nouveau-like, sensitized-atmospheric poetic approach of his early years to pursue a view of art determined more strongly by the priority of the object. The proto-modern pathos of making way for the object without depicting it in a manner 'true to nature', like that of the old masters, led in Rilke's case to the concept of the thing-poem - and thus to a temporarily convincing new answer to the question of the source of aesthetic and ethical authority. From that point, it would be the things themselves from which all authority would come - or rather: from this respectively current singular thing that turns to me by demanding my full gaze. This is only possible because thing-being would now no longer mean anything but this: having something to say.
— Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern
Fortunately or unfortunately, the greatest authority on matters of life is life itself.
— Raheel Farooq
We know from accounts of Rilke's life that his stay in Rodin's workshops taught him how modern sculpture had advanced to the genre of the autonomous torso. The poet's view of the mutilated body thus has nothing to do with the previous century's Romanticism of fragments and ruins
—  it is part of the breakthrough in modern art to the concept of the object that states itself with authority and the body that publicizes itself with authorization.
Don't listen to a man who says we have to work together as a team. He means we have to work as he says.
— C.J. Langenhoven
I believe in a lively disrespect for most forms of authority.
— Rita Mae Brown
How can a good God appoint cruel people to positions of authority? The answer is simple: God is the originator of the authority, but He is not the author of the cruelty. Man is responsible for his cruel actions, not God. All authority is of God, but not all authority is godly.
— John Bevere, Honor's Reward: The Essential Virtue for Receiving God's Blessings
It has often been suggested to me that the Constitution of the United States is a sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it pretends to guarantee is very limited. I have not been impressed with the adequacy of the safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse their power. And the instances when they do not do so are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the Constitution playing any liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose philanthropic aim is selling America out. He accepts the standards of conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum, toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs are turned out like buttons or automobile tires--all cast from the same mold.
— Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks
It does not mean much to be important. The most important man at a burial is dead.
— C.J. Langenhoven
He was one of those characters who felt that a weak handshake could somehow damage his authority, which meant that every handshake had to bloody hurt.
— Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground
When your family is twice as weird as normal, you have to be twice as polite to authority, because authority hates weird.
— Rosemary Clement-Moore, Texas Gothic
My grandmother simply shook her head and said, "You know what you saw. The bird doesn't need to be counted, and neither do you.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice