Quotes from James Q. Wilson

But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.

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 such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.

Mankind's moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one's hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.

If the moral senses can conflict with one another and with what prudent action requires under particular circumstances, then living a good life requires striking a delicate balance among those senses and between them and prudent self-interest.

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 method, made man the measure of all things, and placed individual consent front and center on the political stage.

Half [of] us approve of other people's daughters having children out of wedlock, but hardly any of us approve of that for our daughters. [We] don't wish to be 'judgmental,' unless [we are judging] something we care about, [like] the well-being of the people we cherish

The idea of autonomous individuals choosing everything—their beliefs and values, their history and traditions, their social forms and family structures—is a vainglorious idea, and could only have been invented by thinkers who felt compelled to construct society out of theories.

The fact that there is so much immoral behavior is not evidence of the weakness of the moral senses. The problem of wrong action arises because of the conflict among the several moral senses that exist, because of the struggle between morality and self-interest, and because of the corrosive effect of those forces that blunt the moral senses. We must often choose between duty and sympathy or between fairness and loyalty.

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 it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.

I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care

A government without the power of defense! It is a solecism.

I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.

Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty.

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 such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.

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 partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

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 want.

There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.

There are no more liberals They've all been mugged.

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, such as the Congress of the United States, do not know what they are talking about.

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.