Authority Limitation Quotes

Be you never so high the law is above you.

No foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, spiritual or temporal, shall at any time after the last day of this session of Parliament, use, enjoy, or exercise any manner of power, jurisdiction, superiority, authority, preeminence or privilege, spiritual or ecclesiastical, within this realm, or within any other your majesty's dominions or countries that now be, or hereafter shall be, but from thenceforth the same shall be clearly abolished out of this realm, and all other your highness's dominions for ever; any statute, ordinance, custom, constitutions, or any other matter or cause whatsoever to the contrary in any wise notwithstanding.

All government is an ugly necessity.

The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority.

The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.

In order to prevent those, who are vested with authority, from becoming oppressors, the people have a right, at such periods and in such manner as they shall establish by their frame of government, to cause their public officers to return to private life; and to fill up vacant places by certain and regular elections and appointments.

The great object in view is to limit and qualify the powers of government.

Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

Any change in customs ... takes generations to accomplish, and must come about by general consent. Even a superficial study of sociology shows the futility of past efforts to make a lasting change in manners by an act of will or authority.

The expert is a midwife. The expert is not someone who has the authority to pronounce the last word on the subject.

If a king tries to start a war, a mother should go to him and forbid it.

There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.

Law should rule over rulers, and not rulers over the law

That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.

To strengthen a weak government, we must reduce its power.