A Quote by A.J. Ayer

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

A.J. Ayer

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Authority Moral Rest Solely System

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A.J. Ayer
English - Philosopher
October 29, 1910 - June 27, 1989

In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file.

Mahatma Gandhi

There are three things about Barack that really stand out for me: strength, moral authority, and wisdom. ... He has pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world.

David Cameron

What I intended to accomplish was to rouse the student body, not by means of an organization, but solely by my simple words; to urge them, not to violence, but to moral insight into the existing serious deficiencies of our political system.

Kurt Huber

Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.

Stanley Milgram

1963, because of the sense of moral authority that the civil rights movement had, we were able to get people to respond, because of the quality of our demand and our sense of moral authority.

John Lewis

Moral authority has been laid to rest, world opinion is no more than a game show and the difference between good and evil is about as relevant as changing channels.

Ralph Steadman

Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.

Robert Reich

Fear, coercion, punishment, are the masculine remedies for moral weakness, but statistics show their failure for centuries. Why not change the system and try the education of the moral and intellectual faculties, cheerful surroundings, inspiring influences? Everything in our present system tends to lower the physical vitality, the self-respect, the moral tone, and to harden instead of reforming the criminal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The search for moral guidance which shall not depend upon external authority has invariably ended in the acknowledgment of some new authority.

Walter Lippmann

Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority - not the capture of moral high ground.

Masha Gessen

The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

Thomas Hobbes

Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.

Stephen Covey

The moral authority in the Western world is gone. And it is gone forever. It is gone, not because of the criminal record--everybody's record is criminal. It is gone because you cannot do one thing and pretend you're doing another! None of us, who are sitting around in some of the true limbo out-of-space, which we call "now," waiting to be saved, civilized, or discovered, have the moral authority to say anything.

James Baldwin

Sometimes you have positional authority, and that is very hopeful. But the reality of it is the nation responds to moral authority, when we believe that our president has the entire nation`s best interests at heart.

Tim Scott

Whatever authority I may have rests solely on knowing how little I know.

Socrates

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.

Henry David Thoreau

A Quote by A.J. Ayer

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