Justice without power is incompetence. Power without justice is also i — Competence

"Insofar as our culture conventionally construes technical, scientific, and professional roles as those that obligate men to ignore all but the technical implications of their work, the very social structure itself is inherently pathogenic. The social function of such a segmented role structure is akin to that of the reflexive obedience induced by military training. The function of such a technical role structure, as of military discipline, is to sever the normal moral sensibilities and responsibilities of civilians and soldiers and to enable them to be used as deployables, willing to pursue practically any objective. In the last analysis, such arrangements produce an unthinking readiness to kill or to hurt others - or to produce things that do so - on order."

"Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. Its a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power."

"Is competence not rather a question of degree and a question of context in the sense that children – and, as a matter of fact, all human beings – may very well be competent to decide on certain issues while not on others or be competent to decide if certain conditions are met – such as the conditions required in the doctrine on informed consent – while their decision may be efficient if these conditions are not fulfilled?"

"Every person is going to have a circle of competence. And its going to be very hard to advance that circle. If I had to make my living as a musician.... I cant even think of a level low enough to describe where I would be sorted out to if music were the measuring standard of the civilization. So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you dont, youre going to lose. And thats as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where youve got an edge. And youve got to play within your own circle of competence."