Symbolic Authority Quotes

What holds an Arab leader in power is a mixture of violence and prestige. Both President Assad and King Hussein were felt to have defended Arab interests against the world. That, in the end, is more important than what they wear on their head.

The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe--responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

In some South Pacific cultures, a speaker holds a conch shell as a symbol of temporary position of authority. Leaders must understand who holds the conch that is, who should be listened to and when.

When authority is backed up by an immediate physical compulsion, what we are dealing with is not authority proper (i.e. symbolic authority), but simply an agency of brute force.

For conservative leaders, making candidates pay them court, publicly and ostentatiously, is a colossal source of their symbolic power before their followers. It's kabuki theater, mostly.

The President spoke loudly but carried a small stick.

One of the things that you come pretty early on to understand in this job, and you start figuring out even during the course of the campaign, is that there's Barack Obama the person and there's Barack Obama the symbol, or the office holder, or what people are seeing on television, or just a representative of power. And so when people criticize or respond negatively to me, usually they're responding to this character that they're seeing on TV called Barack Obama, or to the office of the presidency and the White House and what that represents.

Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.

The funny thing about any cop uniform is that people will do what you say when you're wearing a cop uniform.