C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Authority
Even reproof, from authority ought to be grave, and not taunting.
There is no fettering of authority.
Self-possession is the backbone of authority.
A dog is obeyed in office.
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power of dominion.
Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.
The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.
Every legitimate authority should respect its extent and its limits.
Authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, that skins the vice of the top.
A man in authority is but as a candle in the wind, sooner wasted or blown out than under a bushel.
The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance.
God, who prepares His work through ages, accomplishes it, when the hour is come, with the feeblest instruments.
All authority must be out of a man’s self, turned***either upon an art, or upon a man.
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.
There is nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion of authority, like too strong a liquor for a frail glass.
Three means to fortify belief are experience, reason, and authority. Of these the more potent is authority; for belief upon reason or experience will stagger.
Mankind are apt to be strongly prejudiced in favor of whatever is countenanced by antiquity, enforced by authority, and recommended by custom.
An argument from authority is but a weak kind of proof,—it being but a topical probation, and an inartificial argument depending on naked asseveration.
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.
Authority is properly the servant of justice, and political powers are arbitrary and illegitimate if not based upon qualification for that service. This is the doctrine of the ethical derivation of authority or public power, as opposed to that of an unconditioned and inherent sovereignty.
Most of our fellow-subjects are guided either by the prejudice of education or by a deference to the judgment of those who perhaps in their own hearts disapprove the opinions which they industriously spread among the multitude.