They have the ability to take a person's freedom from them. On certain situations they have the ability to take a person's reputation. And under certain circumstances they have the authority to take a person's life.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

Most men after a little freedom have preferred authority with the consoling assurances and the economy of effort it brings.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

Perhaps religious conscience upsets the designs of those who feel that the highest wisdom and authority comes from government. But from the beginning this nation trusted in God not man. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution.

I'm not a food critic and I'm not really an authority to write anything on food.

We'll have a public power authority which will also have the ability to build power or finance power. And more importantly we'll have more power than our economy provides. All of that will give us leverage we don't have today.

I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain Earnest Hemingway Jack London Harriett Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck Charles Dickens Rudyard Kipling Alfred Lord Tennyson to name a few.

The first pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk I'm going to veto it and make the authors of those pork-barrel items famous all over America.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich beautiful and famous more authority than they deserve.

In this connection faith and experience teach us many truths by means of the short-cut of authority and by the proofs of very pleasant and agreeable feelings.

Why should any man have power over any other man's faith seeing Christ Himself is the author of it?

I stepped out on faith to follow my lifelong dream of being an author. I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living it seems to me is largely about risk.

As the most extravagant errors were received among the established articles of their faith so the most infamous vices obtained in their practice and were indulged not only with impunity but authorized by the sanction of their laws.

The balance between faith and reason is for the determination of each individual and of the people as a whole not of unauthorized government officials uttering impious humbug as they arbitrarily try to define that balance.

But I recognize no infallible authority even in special questions consequently whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual I have no absolute faith in any person.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don't think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism Islam or other faiths.

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him skepticism is the highest of duties blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

If children understand that beliefs should be substantiated with evidence as opposed to tradition authority revelation or faith they will automatically work out for themselves that they are atheists.