Very few politicians, who have chosen a political career, can fulfill the aspirations and survive the strains of an elevated office that in a monarchy was filled so randomly. Each tsar had to be simultaneously dictator and supreme general, high priest and Little Father. They required all the qualities listed by the sociologist Max Weber: the personal gift of grace, the virtue of legality, and 'the authority of the eternal yesterday.

...Legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.

The seeming legitimacy that existed in mind a second earlier vaporized before they could be carried out, leaving the air barren.

To create a free society is not to accomplish the impossible task of convincing all people to abandon aggression, but to accomplish the essential task of convincing enough people to abandon the belief that aggression is ever legitimate.

I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling.

Government loses its claim to legitimacy when it fails to fulfill its obligations.

The power of belief gives legitimacy to whatever may be necessary.

The legitimacy of the leadership depends on what that country thinks of its leaders.

So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability, and the U.S. Government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards. Pg. 293.

Whatever you acknowledgement gains the legitimacy to exist within your world.