Authority Bias Quotes

You don't ever ask a barber whether you need a haircut.

There is nothing so wrong as accepting a thing merely because men who have done things say it should be so.

Power says if you are a committee chairman, your idea is good only because you have got power.

Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.

A white man of authority don't ever want to admit to someone of colour they was wrong.

A discovery must be, by definition, at variance with existing knowledge. During my lifetime, I made two. Both were rejected offhand by the popes of the field. Had I predicted these discoveries in my applications, and had those authorities been my judges, it is evident what their decisions would have been.

When someone in power declares that something is broken that means it's actually fine. What they're really saying is, "Let's change this so I like it and ruin it." Nothing is ever broken.

Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.

The Guinness book is a very elitist organization. There's nothing scientific about what they do. They just have an office full of people who decide what is a record and what isn't.

Law always chooses sides on the basis of enforcement power. Morality and legal niceties have little to do with it when the real question is: Who has the clout?

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?

It's true that most people find it far more comfortable to trust an authority than to have their faith questioned.

It is completely in accord with the etatist thinking prevalent everywhere today to consider a theory to be finally disposed of merely because the authorities who control appointments to academic positions, want to know nothing of it, and to see the criterion of truth in the approval of a government office.

If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.

Whoever is in charge thinks the system is just great.

In a discussion of this kind our interest should be centered not on the weight of the authority but on the weight of the argument. Indeed the authority of those who set out to teach is often an impediment to those who wish to learn. They cease to use their own judgment and regard as gospel whatever is put forward by their chosen teacher.

Public health authorities exaggerate health risks for the same reason that sharks eat seals—because that’s just what they do.

There’s not much hostility toward experts in unhurried realms of inquiry like numismatics or number theory. It’s when uncertainty collides with urgency that the authorities enter the fray, convene commissions, and issue findings. Those who accept the sanctioned conclusions gain official backing. Those who don’t are ruled out of bounds. No longer recognized as colleagues with legitimate hypotheses, they risk being treated as crackpots, deniers, and conspiracy theorists.

People are sick of experts.

The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.

The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.

We buy into the computer, and everything that comes from the computer, we believe to be the truth.

There is nothing sooner overthrows a weak head than opinion by authority, like too strong a liquor for a frail glass.

The press . . . traditionally sides with authority and the establishment.

When you have a white male making the arguments, they carry more weight... Should they carry more weight? Absolutely not. But do they? Yes.