William P. Young Quotes

No true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority…. Do the sheep when they are all assembled together rule and guide the shepherd?

Obedience alone gives the right to command.

I don't think you can impose a social order from the top down.

Leadership and power vacuums will be filled.

A man with a club is a law-maker.

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

A deck of cards is built like the purest of hierarchies, with every card a master to those below it, a lackey to those above it.

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

It is a base thing for a man among the people not to obey those in command. Never in a state can the laws be well administered when fear does not stand firm.

It's about living in a world with rules, or a world without rules.

Some single mind must be master, else there will be no agreement in anything.

The policy is one thing, but it's dictated by what the process is.

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order.

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.

There is no king where there is no law.

Even when you’re in charge, you’re not sure who’s in charge.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

Structure is not about moving boxes around on a chart. Structure is about power.

Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed, Some are, and must be greater than the rest -

If we don’t enforce the regulations we have, these conversations are useless.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there's layer after layer of management - a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

Control is the source of strategic power.

If you've been on top of the food chain in the Armed Forces, that's who you are. You're used to dealing with your life in a particular way.

A regulator is supposed to create and enforce a standard.

If you're going to maintain true authorities over a subordinate organization, you have to have some control over policy formulation of that organization and also the resources that are applied to it.