Obedience Quotes - page 13
We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast - and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.
Felix Adler
Because there is nothing proportionate between the armed and the unarmed; and it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed, or that the unarmed man should be secure among armed servants. Because, there being in the one disdain and in the other suspicion, it is not possible for them to work well together.
Niccolò Machiavelli
In my experience, psychoanalysis demanded loyalty that could not be questioned, the blind acceptance of unexamined "wisdom". It is characteristic of religious orders to seek obedience without scepticism, but it spells the death of intellectual enquiry. All variants of "because I say so," or because the Koran says so, or the Bible says so, or the Upanishads say so, or Freud says so, or Marx says so, are simply different means of stifling intellectual dissent. In the end they cannot satisfy the inquisitive mind or still the doubts that naturally arise when such a mind is confronted with authoritative statements about human behavior.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
The Church, poor old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that: the noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict training not only to whatever useful knowledge could be had from writing and reading, but to obedience, to pious reverence, self-restraint, annihilation of self,-really to human nobleness in many most essential respects. No questions asked about your birth, genealogy, quantity of money-capital or the like; the one question was, "Is there some human nobleness in you, or is there not?"
Thomas Carlyle
The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience.
Simone Weil
In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
Edmund Burke
I do not disbelieve that in some mysterious transcendental sense, as involved in the system of the entire universe, with so vast an arc that no faculty of man can apprehend its curve, that in some such sense the Catholic doctrine of the atonement may be true. But a doctrine out of which, with our reason, our feeling, our logic, I at least can gather any practical instruction for mankind - any deeper appreciation of the attributes of God, any deeper love for Him, any stimulant towards our own obedience - such a doctrine I cannot find it. I bury what I am to think of it in the deepest corner of my own heart, where myself I fear to look.
James Anthony Froude
The world calls for, and expects from us, simplicity of life, the spirit of prayer, charity towards all, especially towards the lowly and the poor, obedience and humility, detachment, and self-sacrifice. Without this mark of holiness, our word will have difficulty in touching the heart of modern man.
Pope Paul VI
The habits of a man accustomed to command - especially on a foreign station, would necessarily be reserved and secluded. Not only accustomed to implicit obedience, but aware of its imperative necessity under the circumstances in which they have been placed, such are apt to expect it from all. Now, what is but the necessary authority in official life, and with man over man, seems harshness when extended to woman.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
