Quotes by James Q. Wilson

James Q. Wilson

[in 1998] I know my political ideas affect what I write but I’ve tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I’ve written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn’t know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.

Ideas

Land

Writing

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

Defense

Government

Power

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

Connections

Window

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

Unjust

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

Strong

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

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

Government

Scope

Size

Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.

Character

Expression

Self

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.

Mean

People

Talking

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

Character

Crime

Pay

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Achievement

Agency

Believe

Broken

Car

Care

Character

Children

Community

Connections

Corporations

Cost

Country

Crime

Criminals

Defense

Doe

Drunk

Educational

Exercise

Expression

Family

Father

Fire

Firsts

Government

Guilt

Gun

Ideas

Inspirational

Land

Law

Left

Light

Long

Mean

Men

Mind

Mistake

Monopoly

Needs

New York

Order

Pay

Peace

People

Police

Political

Poor

Power

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Quotes by James Q. Wilson

James Q. Wilson

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Character is not the enemy of self-expression and personal freedom, it is their necessary precondition.

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.

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

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Topics by James Q. Wilson

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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