Seneca the Younger Quotes

I am a collaborator with everyone who agrees that I need to be in control. I happily collaborate with my loyalists.

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.

I think I'm a natural-born leader. I know how to bow down to authority if it's authority that I respect.

He who allows me to rule is in fact my master.

I remember being taught my place.

When you make your peace with authority you become authority.

No one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled.

I don't mind following good leaders.

The greater the power that deigns to serve you, the more honor it demands of you.

No man is safe above but he that will gladly be beneath.

The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.

All of us are subjected to somebody else's power at some point. So once in a while you kiss ass. So what? Either you make your peace with that early, or you end up living your life as a crank and a misfit.

My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it.

Sometimes, when I can't get to sleep, I imagine all the rules I'd invent if I ever got to be in charge of the world.

The United States has to be a leader in the world, because the problem is: If we are not leading, nobody else will.

Men live in glad obedience to the masters they believe in, or they live in a frictional opposition to the master they wish to undermine.

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly followed.

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

Learn to obey before you command.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

People in power, they're so used to people kind of playing up to them.