Starship Troopers - Ch. 12

Major Reid: But this universe consists of paired dualities. What is the converse of authority? Mr. Rico.

Rico: Responsibility, sir.

Major Reid: Applause. Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal–else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority other than through the tragic logic of history...If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead–and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.