Authority Quotes – Insights on Power and Leadership

"The fundamental problem with our democracy is that it is not one. The people—the nominal ruler and sovereign—have, in reality, nothing to say. … Behind the democratic façade, a system has been installed in which completely different rules apply than those of the Basic Law. The system is undemocratic and corrupt; it abuses power and unscrupulously deceives citizens. … Every German is free to obey laws to which he has never consented; he may admire the majesty of the Basic Law, whose validity he has never legitimized; he is free to pay homage to politicians whom no citizen has ever elected, and to provide for them lavishly—with his tax money, about the use of which he has never been consulted. Overall, the state and politics are in a condition of which only professional optimists or hypocrites can claim it has arisen from the will of the citizens."

Prof. Dr. Hans Herbert von Arnim

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."

Josef Stalin

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"One might still justify the submission of an entire people to a small number of rulers if those in power were the best among us—but that is not the case, never has been, and never can be. All too often it is the worst, the most insignificant, the most cruel, the most immoral—and especially the most deceitful—who rule. And the fact that this is so is no accident."

Leo Tolstoi (Leo Tolstoy)

"It is hardly necessary to point out that the inability of the masses to judge correctly deprives them of any capacity for critical thought—that is, the ability to distinguish truth from error and to form a sound judgment. The judgments adopted by the masses are merely imposed on them and are never the result of careful examination. Many individuals, in this respect, do not rise above the level of the crowd. The ease with which certain opinions become widely accepted is due above all to the inability of most people to form an opinion of their own on the basis of personal reasoning."

Gustave Le Bon

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root"

Henry David Thoreau

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong."

Voltaire

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Martin Luther King

"For almost two years now, an alleged pandemic has had us firmly in its grip. Day after day, the media and politicians bombard us with narratives and measures. It’s time we take a stand against it. This may be our last chance. If we go along with it and they achieve their goal, life here will become very uncomfortable for us and for future generations. I hope that resistance and clarity continue to grow—and that we force an end to it."

Tobias Levels

"Fear of the virus—fear of getting sick, fear of dying—is the most effective distraction one can politically set in motion: to intimidate people and focus them on that fear so completely that, in the end, you can basically do whatever you want with us."

Dr. Hans-Joachim Maaz

"I never thought I'd live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone."

John Joseph Lydon

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini

"Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism."

Ayn Rand

"It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger."

Jimmy Carter

"Government is the illusion of authority, but more importantly government is mind control. Naturally, since if you want people to believe in this fictitious thing called ‘authority’ you first have to mold the minds of the collective to accept this false ideology. This is what government is. It’s the illusion of some “official” group of people out there who get to tell everybody else what to do and how to do it. The truth is there is no such thing as authority, and government is an illusion that we’ve imposed upon ourselves from the irrational thinking of a controlled mind.

It’s generally agreed that the power of government ultimately comes from the people. Governments seem to have rights that individuals do not. And it’s agreed that it is these individuals that make up government. It doesn’t take much critical thinking to realize that individuals are granting power that they don’t possess to a group of other individuals who call themselves ‘government’. One cannot delegate a right that they do not possess individually. This is one of the fundamental reasons why government is completely and utterly fallacious."

Joe Dubs

"The tactic of the ‘Querdenker’ movement is to gradually fight for control of the streets. The police must act—and if necessary, use pepper spray and batons. We must not give them an inch!"

Saskia Lea Raquel Weishaupt

"Who dares not speak his free thought is a slave."

Euripides

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

Claude Frédéric Bastiat