Unaccountable Authority Quotes

Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.

I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, They arrive at their conclusions—largely inarticulate. Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none: But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.

It is not a court, when sentence is passed by judge-bureaucrats who are dependent upon the authorities. In the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal there are no jurors from the general public, there are only state officials, drawing their salaries from the state treasury, which is in the hands of Trotsky and other People’s Commissars. It is not a court, when the accused is not allowed to call witnesses in his defense. … This debauchery is being carried out in your name, Russian worker!

How did we come to this: a Kafkaesque world where information that is in the public domain can be retroactively declared secret.

We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.

The royal family are protected from public accountability by law.

The Senate establishment is almost the antithesis of democracy. It is what might be called a self-perpetuating oligarchy with only mild overtones of a plutocracy.

It is a dark, unspoken truth that the powerful - the 'ruling class' - make up the rules as they go along.

In recent years... forces have developed in our government over which we have no control, and these forces have an authoritarian approach to justice - meaning, they tell you what justice is.

It's not just that individuals have lost faith in the integrity of their leaders, it's that they no longer believe society's most powerful institutions are acting in their interests.

We are very fortunate to live in this country, but at the same time, the reason the forces are so much more destructive here is because they are faceless.

Its contempt for citizens ... is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn't hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses -- and lives -- in the process.

The Supreme Court is not elected, and it is therefore not a proper arbiter of social policy.

We have allowed an unholy alliance of government - the new monarchy - and corporate influence - the new aristocracy - to take control of events in a way that would have made our Founders shudder.

You look at the pillars of the state: politics, the media, police, lawyers - they've all got their formal role, and then nestling above that is that power elite who are networked in through soft, social links, that are actually running the show. Why didn't I know that 10 years ago, and why didn't I rail against it? Why did I become part of it?

The citizen is becoming a pawn in a game where nobody knows the rules, where everybody consequently doubts that there are rules at all, and where the vocabulary has been diminished to such an extent that nobody is even sure what the game is all about.