Author details
All James Q. Wilson Quotes
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 freedom.
James Q. Wilson
60% of people like this quote
I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care.
James Q. Wilson
55% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
54% of people like this quote
In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.
James Q. Wilson
54% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
53% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
53% of people like this quote
A government without the power of defense! It is a solecism.
James Q. Wilson
53% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
51% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
50% of people like this quote
I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.
James Q. Wilson
50% of people like this quote
But no one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.
James Q. Wilson
49% of people like this quote
There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.
James Q. Wilson
49% of people like this quote
Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.
James Q. Wilson
48% of people like this quote
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.
James Q. Wilson
48% of people like this quote
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