The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

I had decided I wanted to write about food and I knew the only way to do that is to speak with authority which meant learning the language and knowing what that experience is like.

Watching the evening news in 2011 is a strange time-travel experience. 'The CBS Evening News ' 'ABC World News' and 'NBC Nightly News' haven't changed their style over the decades still going for that old-fashioned mix of voice-of-authority pomp and feel-good fluff. The difference is that people aren't watching.

For me titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try they can be really hard to repair. Or worse if the author thinks they pop out perfect but the publishing house does not agree it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments and if need be supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

Last year Congress gave the Department of Defense the authority to design a new civilian personnel system for its employees as part of the defense authorization bill.

Readers always seem to think that the author has some control over the design of their books.

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

Monarchs ought to put to death the authors and instigators of war as their sworn enemies and as dangers to their states.

He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

Dad was a chemistry professor at Saint Olaf College in Minnesota then Oxford College in Minnesota and a very active member of the American Chemical Society education committee where he sat on the committee with Linus Pauling who had authored a very phenomenally important textbook of chemistry.

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.

What I find cool about being a banned author is this: I'm writing books that evoke a reaction books that if dropped in a lake go down not with a whimper but a splash.

Being an author of banned books is cool I've decided.

The great work must inevitably be obscure except to the very few to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing whether they want it to be or not and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

Every song has a composer every book has an author every car has a maker every painting has a painter and every building has a builder. So it isn't irrational to take this simple logic a little further and say that nature must have had a Maker. It would be irrational to believe that it made itself.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

Almost anyone can be an author the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.