#authority

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones. ↗

— Bill Forsyth

#business #decisions #emotional #instead #interesting

Conventional dogmas, even if endowed with the authority of an Aristotle - ancient or modern - must be tested vigorously. If they are found wanting, we need not bother with them. But if they are found to be substantially correct, we may not overlook them. ↗

— Norman Lamm

#aristotle #authority #bother #conventional #correct

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts. ↗

— Philip Roth

#audacity #authority #beauty #belief #contest

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. ↗

— Siegfried Sassoon

#am #authority #because #being #believe

And revolutions always mean the breakdown of old authority. ↗

— Hu Shih

#authority #breakdown #mean #old #revolutions

Authority must be respected and chosen wisely. ↗

— Lech Walesa

#chosen #must #respected #wisely

...But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative—the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is meant to support some political movement or ideology. All fiction reinscribes the problematic past in terms of the present, and, if it is significant at all, reckons with it instead of simply making it palatable or pretty. What aesthetic is adequate to the Holocaust, or to the recent tragedy in Haiti? Narrative is not exculpatory—it is in fact about culpability, about recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us. If we’re to say anything important, we require an art less facile, and editors willing to seek it. ↗

— Michael Copperman

#authority #culpability #race #representation #art

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ↗

— James Madison

#constitution #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #politics #freedom

Our natural rights come from an authority beyond the petty rule of man. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#freedom #right #freedom

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes. ↗

— William H. Seward

#constitution #devotes #domain #higher #law