146 Obedience To Authority Quotes

Following is our list of obedience to authority quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about obedience.

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Famous Obedience To Authority Quotes

Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience. — Howard Zinn

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority. — Stanley Milgram

Those who know the least obey the best. — George Farquhar

Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach an obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect. — Bruno Bettelheim

Obedience is the burial of the will and the resurrection of humility. — John Climacus

Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child. — Anne Sullivan Macy

People are submissive to power, and few of them can be influenced by doctrines of righteousness. — Han Fei

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion. — C.P. Snow

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple... It inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks. — John Vianney

Be obedient even when you do not know where obedience may lead you — Sinclair B. Ferguson

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. - Albert Einstein

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. — Albert Einstein

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority. — Benjamin Franklin

The cost of obedience is small compared with the cost of disobedience. — Saint Augustine

Dogs like to obey. It gives them security. — James Herriot

Somebody is waiting on the other side of your obedience. — Tim Storey

Short Obedience To Authority Quotes

  • The problem in this world is not civil disobedience...th e problem in this world is civil obedience. — Howard Zinn
  • Herd psychology, conformity, capitulation — Howard Marks
  • If you don’t have a problem with authority at this point, you probably can’t be helped. — Bret Weinstein
  • He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. — Solon
  • The greatest test of life is obedience to God. — Ezra Taft Benson
  • Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. — Eric Liddell
Obedience to authority quote Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinkng. They want obedient workers, people
Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinkng. They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

Respect For Authority Quotes

Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. — Vince Lombardi

Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life. — Marcus Garvey

My respect for human beings is based not on the colour of a man’s skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit. — Nelson Mandela

Obedience to authority quote The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

Crowley shook his head. "I sometimes wonder if it was a good idea having Halt train apprentices. He seems to teach them no respect for authority." "Oh, he teaches us to respect authority," Gilan said innocently. "He just teaches us to ignore it when necessary. — John Flanagan

For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority. — Red Smith

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences. — Andre Gide

Obedience to authority quote Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Congress shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. — James Madison

You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot! — Joseph Heller

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably. — George Bernard Shaw

Have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, "Is it reasonable?" — Richard P. Feynman

Obedience Quotes

God is responsible for the consequences of our obedience, WE are responsible for the consequences of our disobedience — Charles Stanley

When God calls you to something, He is not always calling you to succeed, He’s calling you to obey! The success of the calling is up to Him;the obedience is up to you. — David Wilkerson

Great moves of God are usually preceded by simple acts of obedience. — Steven Furtick

What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it. - John Bunyan

What God says is best, is best, though all the men in the world are against it. — John Bunyan

Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one's will to God in deep humility. — Charles Grandison Finney

Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience. — John Locke

Obedience to authority quote Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.
Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.

Intimate knowledge of God is possible if we habitually search His Holy Scriptures & translate what we find into obedience. — George Muller

Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other. — Angela Davis

Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God's will that brings certainty. — Eric Liddell

I proceed, gentlemen, to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within the commonwealth; in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens; chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience. — Dorothea Dix

Obedience To God Quotes

When we demonstrate our faith in God by our obedience, He not only promises to provide for us, He will provide. — Benny Hinn

Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God. — Benjamin Franklin

If we haven't learned to be worshipers it doesn't really matter how well we do anything else. Worship changes us or it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. — Erwin W. Lutzer

It is only by a total death to self we can be lost in God. - Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

It is only by a total death to self we can be lost in God. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. - Charles Grandison Finney

A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. — Charles Grandison Finney

God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to. — Elisabeth Elliot

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him. — Charles Studd

Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God. — Oswald Chambers

The acid test of our love for God is obedience to His Word. The greatest ability is dependability. The test of your character is what it takes to stop you. Trust God as if it all depends upon Him, and work as if it all depends upon you. — Bob Jones, Sr.

True obedience is the refusal to compromise in any regard our relationship with God, regardless of the consequences. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Christian Obedience Quotes

Radical obedience to Christ is not easy... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us. — David Platt

There is no justification without sanctification, no forgiveness without renewal of life, no real faith from which the fruits of new obedience do not grow. — Martin Luther

The bottom line in the Christian life is obedience and most people don't even like the word. — Charles Stanley

Ask yourself whose voice are you listening to? What you see in me is the result of prayer and hard work and obedience to the voice of God. — Folorunsho Alakija

Don’t joke with God. You should not only reverence God, you should fear Him as well. — Enoch Adeboye

To be entirely safe from the devil's snares the man of God must be completely obedient to the Word of the Lord. The driver on the highway is safe, not when he reads the signs but when he obeys them. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I want to tell someone here today, that just as He (God) singled me out to bless in all areas of my life, He will do that same to you: if you listen to His voice. — Folorunsho Alakija

Questioning God is only a waste of time and an insult to the Most High. — Enoch Adeboye

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one. — Oswald Chambers

We see people who are walking freely in sin but we need to turn and listen to the voice of God because with obedience comes blessings. — Folorunsho Alakija

God Obedience Quotes

O God, when my faith gets overladen with dust, blow it clean with the wind of your Spirit. When my habits of obedience get stiff and rusty, anoint them with the oil of your Spirit. Restore the enthusiasm of my first love for you. — Eugene H. Peterson

I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim. Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. — Susan B. Anthony

Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

True humility is absolute obedience and dependence on God. It puts Him first, others second, and ourselves third in all things. — John Bevere

When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him. — Elisabeth Elliot

LIFE is that existence that is given to man to live for a purpose, to live to his own satisfaction and pleasure, providing he forgets not the God who created him and who expects a spiritual obedience and observation of the moral laws that He has inspired. — Marcus Garvey

Every time you open up your heart in obedience to God and worship Him with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, our beautiful Lord responds with His magnificent presence. — Darlene Zschech

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures? — Martin Gardner

Above all, remember that God looks for solid virtues in us, such as patience, humility, obedience, abnegation of your own will - that is, the good will to serve Him and our neighbor in Him. His providence allows us other devotions only insofar as He sees that they are useful to us. — Ignatius of Loyola

We cannot understand the meaning of many trials; God does not explain them. To explain a trial would be to destroy its object, which is that of calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience. — Alfred Edersheim

Obedient Quotes

Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive willingly and carry out effectively your loving father's advice, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience. — Benedict of Nursia

The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience which comes naturally to those who cherish Christ above all. — Benedict of Nursia

It is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act. — Stanley Milgram

From my childhood, obedience was something I could not get out of my system. When I entered the armed service at the age of twenty-seven, I found being obedient not a bit more difficult than it had been during my life to that point. It was unthinkable that I would not follow orders. — Adolf Eichmann

Mafia is a process,not a thing. Mafia is a form of clan - cooperation to which it's individual members pledge lifelong loyalty....Friendship, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience - this was the glue that held us together. — Joseph Bonanno

But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power. — Howard Zinn

It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974) — Stanley Milgram

A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act, and without pangs of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority. — Stanley Milgram

Grades don't measure anything other than your relevant obedience to a manager. — John Taylor Gatto

O Allah, You know that the only thing I want in this life Is to be obedient to Your command. Even the living sight of my eyes Is service at your court — Rabia Basri

Blind Obedience Quotes

War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder. — Alexander Berkman

There is a difference between being a leader and being a boss. Both are based on authority. A boss demands blind obedience; a leader earns his authority through understanding and trust. — Klaus Balkenhol

Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Nothing is more destructive of human dignity than a rule which imposes a mute and blind obedience. — Anthony Eden

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism. — Angelina Grimke

Inquiry is human; blind obedience brutal. Truth never loses by the one but often suffers by the other. — William Penn

What we call "morals" is simply blind obedience to words of command. — Havelock Ellis

Science ... looks skeptically at all claims to knowledge, old and new. It teaches not blind obedience to those in authority but to vigorous debate, and in many respects that's the secret of its success. — Carl Sagan

We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see. — Boyd K. Packer

Blind obedience is a sure sign of trouble. The likelihood of religion becoming evil is greatly diminished when there is freedom for individual thinking and when honest inquiry is encouraged. — Charles Kimball

Disobedience Quotes

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness. — Mahatma Gandhi

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

A defiant deed has greater value than unnumerable thousands of words. - Emmeline Pankhurst

A defiant deed has greater value than unnumerable thousands of words. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Sound doctrine does not enter into the hard and disobedient heart; but, as if beaten back, enters anew into itself. — Justin Martyr

Today's difficulties are often a result of yesterday's disobedience. — Priscilla Shirer

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought. — Margaret Chase Smith

The key of joy is disobedience. — Aleister Crowley

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being. — Joan Baez

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. — Edward R. Murrow

People Writing About Obedience To Authority

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn
quotes on hope

222 1977
Read quotes by Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram
quotes on education, religion and psychology

23 760
Read quotes by George Farquhar

George Farquhar
quotes on education, religion and government

39 116
Read quotes by Bruno Bettelheim

Bruno Bettelheim
quotes on love, education and life

38 439
Read quotes by John Climacus

John Climacus
quotes on love, faith and perseverance

56 598
Read quotes by Anne Sullivan Macy

Anne Sullivan Macy
quotes on education, leadership and friendship

35 542

More Obedience To Authority Quotes

He who refuses to obey cannot command. — African Proverbs

Relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. — Stanley Milgram

The essence in obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as an instrument for carrying out another person's wishes and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions. — Stanley Milgram

For an American to be patriotic is to be loyal to the principles of our Constitution, and the First Amendment. The truth is that the policies of the government is sometimes in conflict with that. In our country, patriotism should not be defined as obedience to an authority. — Daniel Ellsberg

I was brought up to question authority, and thank God for that. — Pink

And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. — Stanley Milgram

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. — William F. Buckley, Jr.

If you are a czar or a king or a president or someone that wants to control those below them you do not want people to have a consciousness of life, of their needs. Because people do not make good slaves when they're connected to life... That's why in the public schools the primary objective is obedience to authority. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is the duty of a woman to be obedient to her husband, and unless she is, I would not give a damn for all her queenly right and authority; nor for her either, if she will quarrel, and lie about the work of God and the principle of plurality. — Heber C. Kimball

As one might expect, authoritarianism will at times cause children and students to adopt rebellious positions, defiant of any limit, discipline, or authority. But it will also lead to apathy, excessive obedience, uncritical conformity, lack of resistance against authoritarian discourse, self-abnegation, and fear of freedom. — Paulo Freire

Each temple building is an inspiration, magnificent and beautiful in every way, but the temple building alone does not bless. The endowed blessings and divine functions—come through obedience and faithfulness to priesthood authority and covenants made. — James E. Faust

The church doctrines of obedience to authority, repentance, fear of punishment, self-abnegation, acceptance of outer direction rather than inner assurance, elevation of faith over reason, and intolerance make institutionalized religion an ideal instrument of social constraint. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority. — Ayn Rand

But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival. — Stanley Milgram

Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority. — Andrew Bernstein

Some lawyers and judges may have forgotten it, but the purpose of the court system is to produce justice, not slavish obedience to the law. — Charley Reese

When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty. — Charles Horton Cooley

The kind of "blind obedience" once theologized as the ultimate step to holiness, is itself blind. It blinds a person to the insights and foresight and moral perspective of anyone other than an authority figure. — Joan D. Chittister

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank. — Peter Drucker

Justice requires that to lawfully constituted Authority there be given that respect and obedience which is its due; that the laws which are made shall be in wise conformity with the common good; and that, as a matter of conscience all men shall render obedience to these laws. — Pope Pius XI

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety. — E. O. Wilson

Obedience to public authority ought not to be based either on ignorance or stupidity. — Napoleon Bonaparte

REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. — Ambrose Bierce

The only safe and honorable course for a self-respecting man is to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience ... not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience. — Mahatma Gandhi

The priesthood holds consummate power. It can protect you from the plague of pornography-and it is a plague-if you are succumbing to its influence. If one is obedient, the priesthood can show how to break a habit and even erase an addiction. Holders of the priesthood have that authority and should employ it to combat evil influences. — Boyd K. Packer

Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else. — Simone Weil

One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second. — Robert Baden-Powell

The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God, Whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. — George Mason

Can those entrusted with the gravest authority set any example save that of the sternest obedience to the law? — Calvin Coolidge

Democracy and equality try to denythe mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority. — D. H. Lawrence

Over and over again, people had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience. This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has, over and over again, happened throughout history. It is time again to cry out against our 'leaders,' to question (since it is not for us to say that they are evil) whether or not they are sane. — Dorothy Day

The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility. — Rosa Luxemburg

Obedience is the psychological mechanism that links individual action to political purpose. It is the dispositional cement that binds men to systems of authority. — Stanley Milgram

But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. — John Ruskin

Obedience to authority saves many skins — Sophocles

Even the Savior of the world, the Only Begotten Son of God, was obliged to come to earth and to take upon himself an earthly tabernacle. He experienced joy and sorrow, happiness and grief, lasting satisfaction and frequent disappointments. As Paul has written, "Though he were a Son yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." — Alma P Burton

I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision. — Abbie Hoffman

Many man's scruples lie almost wholly about obedience to authority and compliance with indifferent customs, but very seldom about the dangers of disobedience and unpeaceableness and rending in pieces the Church of Christ by needless separations and endless divisions. — John Tillotson

It is important for the apologist who desires to be obedient to the Word of God in defending the faith to pay special attention to the fact that throughout Scripture, God's veracity is not defended, but accepted from the outset on His authority. Unless we have more wisdom than that contained in the revelation of God, we should take the same attitude. — Greg L. Bahnsen

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