Top James Q. Wilson Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

James Q. Wilson Biography

James Quinn Wilson (May 27, 1931 – March 2, 2012) was an American academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration. Most of his career was spent as a professor at UCLA and Harvard University. He was the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (1985–1990), and the President's Council on Bioethics. He was Director of Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard-MIT.

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James Q. Wilson Quotes

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

Defense, Government, Power, Solecism

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 or fear-inspiring father.

Family, Father, Masculine, Personality, Strong

The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. . . . Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society.

Beginning, Children, Expected, Family, Powerful, Together

During the 1960s, one neighborhood in San Francisco had the lowest income, the highest unemployment rate, the highest proportion of families with incomes under four thousand dollars a year, the least educational attainment, the highest tuberculosis rate, and the highest proportion of substandard housing. . . That neighborhood was called Chinatown. Yet, in 1965, there were only five persons of Chinese ancestry committed to prison in the entire state of California.

Ancestry, Attainment, California, Committed, Educational, San Francisco

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

Gone, Powers, Public Opinion, Rights, Support

There are no more liberals Theyve all been mugged.

Liberals, Mugged, Theyve

Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community.

Community, Drunk, Identifiable, Person, Unjust

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

Believe, Care, Health, Ought, Poor, Subsidize

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

Peace, People, Power, Struggle, System

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

Believe, Crime, Freedom, Part, Pay

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 political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.

Agencies, Agency, Exercise, Part, Powerful, Problems

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 few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.

Car, Fire, Light, Perhaps, Repaired, Trash

The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.

Application, People, Remarkable, Rise, Views, War

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.

Individual, Live, Men, Mind, Political, Stage

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

Gun, Public, Putting, Sit, Want, Way

The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.

Achievement, Culture, Inevitable, People, Wall

Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

Broken, Cost, Costs, Doe, Populated, Window

A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows.

Broken, Cases, Connections, Individual, Window

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

Insisting, Making, Mistake, Monopoly, School

Public order is a fragile thing, and if you don't fix the first broken window, soon all the windows will be broken.

Broken, Firsts, Order, Public, Window

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