Challenging Power Quotes

I think the job of a good journalist, especially in Washington, is to create discomfort, and I think for a certain class of people, and for whom life is quite comfortable, I've created discomfort. So I take that as a badge of honor.

We want to put power to the test of adversarial review.

When a new idea assaults the power of established authority, authority always screams out that morality has been affronted. It makes no difference if this idea is that the world is round or that women should vote or that the workers should control industry.

Facts are subversive. Subversive of the claims made by democratically elected leaders as well as dictators, by biographers and autobiographers, spies and heroes, torturers and post-modernists. Subversive of lies, half-truths, myths; of all those "easy speeches that comfort cruel men.

What gets called 'the sixties' left a mixed legacy and a lot of divides. But it opened everything to question, and what seems the most fundamental and most pervasive in all the ensuing changes is the loss of faith in authority: the authority of government, of science, of patriarchy, of progress, of capitalism, of violence, of whiteness.

Comedians have to challenge the power. Comedians should be dangerous and devastating - and funny. That's the hardest part.

Some will say that I have an issue with authority, but I just like to question things.

Truth for authority, not authority for truth.

I don't bother writing about Fox News. It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, 'Look how courageous I am.' But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.

My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.

I was brought up to question authority, and thank God for that.

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

We've tickled the nose of the tiger, the establishment are frothing at the mouth.

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning. I think I've learned that lesson twice now. The essence of successful revolution, be it for an individual, a community of individuals, or a nation, depends on accepting that challenge.

Insofar as the universities are free and independent, they will also be "subversive," in the sense that dominant structures of power and their ideological support will be subjected to challenge and critique, a counterpart to attitudes that are fostered in the hard sciences wherever they are taken seriously.

To me art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete... with Dada I also have in common a certain mistrust towards power. We don't like authority, we don't like power.

It is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY. You have to speak with it, too.

I don't shy away from standing up against the president or other people who I think are taking us in the wrong direction.

'Saturday Night Live' has always been, you know, non-partisan - whoever's in power should probably be challenged.