Legitimacy Quotes

Jesus was not denying the legitimacy of biblical law. On the contrary, He was affirming biblical law. We love God first; God commands us to keep His word; therefore, we must enforce the law on ourselves. (Gary North)
War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy. View quote
Alva Myrdal
The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power. View quote
Carol P. Christ
Unless the Security Council is restored to its pre-eminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force, we are on a dangerous path to anarchy. View quote
Kofi Annan
The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power. View quote
Colin Powell
In brief, nationalism is a theory of political legitimacy, which requires the ethnic boundaries should not be cut across political ones, and, in particular, that ethnic boundaries within a given state a contingency already formally excluded by the principle in its general formulation should not separate the power holders from the rest. View quote
Ernest Gellner
The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract. View quote
Ha-Joon Chang
This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy. View quote
Golda Meir
As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict. View quote
J. M. Coetzee
The appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and "psychic hermaphroditism" made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of "perversity"; but it also made possible the formation of a "reverse" discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or "naturality" be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categories by which it was medically disqualified. View quote
Michel Foucault
[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions. (Kenneth Boulding)
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. View quote
Barbara Tuchman
The authority of science promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies. Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality. In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad. View quote
Cornel West
Unless the power of the corporation can be organized on an accepted principle of legitimacy, it will... be taken over by a Central government... View quote
Peter Drucker
There are two fairly standard approaches to political power used by those who seek it. Some seek power with the assumption that the citizenry are the source of legitimacy and are to be treated with respect. Others concentrate on identifying whatever insecurities there are within the citizenry and on exploiting them. View quote
John Ralston Saul
We need a reform of the Security Council. It must be perceived as truly representative by all the 191 member states, to uphold the credibility and legitimacy of the UN as the main political arena. View quote
Anna Lindh
In November 2000, the Republicans stole from America our most precious right of all: the right to free and fair elections... Now President Bush occupies the White House, but with questionable legitimacy. View quote
Cynthia McKinney
In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of "the Haves" over the human rights of "the Have Nots" is inevitably called into serious question. View quote
David Korten
Drafting a constitution is only the first step. The constitution has to be granted legitimacy by open discussion and a fair, representative referendum. View quote
Emma Bonino
Reaffirming the justice of the American system bolsters our legitimacy with allies, thereby encouraging further cooperation and improving our national security. View quote
John Garamendi
Most centrist Democrats... try to distance themselves from controversies that recall the 1960s. There are journalistic centrists as well, who avoid hard truths for the sake of acceptance and legitimacy. (Tom Hayden)
Take the cases of Kerala or Kashmir, Bengal or Tripura, it will not come in the media. Some people have selective sensitivity. Hundreds of workers have been killed only for political ideology. In Tripura, workers were hanged. In Bengal, murders are still on. In Kerala too ... perhaps, in India only one political party has faced such killings. Violence has been given legitimacy. This is a danger before us. View quote
Narendra Modi
I think that the legitimacy of the court would be undermined in any case if the court made a decision based on its perception of public opinion. View quote
Samuel Alito
b>America needs fewer laws, not more prisons. By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy. We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government. View quote
James Bovard
Our efforts are not aimed at isolating Israel or de-legitimizing it; rather we want to gain legitimacy for the cause of the people of Palestine. We only aim to de-legitimize the settlement activities and the occupation and apartheid and the logic of ruthless force, and we believe that all the countries of the world stand with us in this regard. View quote
Mahmoud Abbas