James Q. Wilson Quotes

24 quotes in 493 categories

• Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty.
• The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every…
• Boys are more likely to develop a masculine personality and acquire strong moral standards when they have a loving and nurturant rather than a threatening…
• Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open…
• We live in a world shaped by the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment...[it] enlarged the scope of human freedom, prepared our minds for the scientific…
• Broken Window Theory: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a…
• In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.
• I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.
• But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government
• I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for…
• If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for…
• There is no way the American public will sit still for the banning of or putting any significant restrictions on the kinds of guns they…
• I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care
• Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in…
• I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine…
• Community-based policing has now come to mean everything. It's a slogan. It has come to mean so many different things that people who endorse it,…
• What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.
• Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.
• A government without the power of defense! It is a solecism.
• There are no more liberals Theyve all been mugged.

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