Rousas John Rushdoony Quotes

Historically, both religious and secular laws originate from the same source

If God is sovereign, then it is impossible for civil government to be neutral on issues of law. All law is based in some religious code.

… from the time of the Mosaic revelation through to the final collapse of Jewish sovereignty, God’s people observed no distinction between civil and religious law.

Different cultures have different predilections for different kinds of crime.

I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards.

Laws matter. With effective implementation and enforcement, good laws can nudge forward positive changes in social and cultural mores.

Different cultures produce a different 'cool.' And your perception of 'cool' changes depending on where you are.

We must never allow the majority to overrule the clear teaching of the Word of God.

As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he's gonna rule the world with a rod of iron. That means he's gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you're not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school. We will live by the law of God and no other law.

Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

I believe Islam is superior. And will not be surpassed. So I believe that the law of God is much superior to man-made law.

The Law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code.

We don't grow up in vacuums. We grow up in societies.

The government of a country never gets ahead of the religion of a country. There is no way by which we can substitute the authority of the law for the virtues of men.

It's impossible to expect polite behavior from people who've never witnessed it.

America derives its laws from its Constitution. It derives its values from the Bible. We don't get inalienable rights from the Constitution; we get them from God.

Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel

Civilization has taught us to eat with a fork, but even now if nobody is around we use our fingers.

Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.

When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God.

The confused mass of rules of conduct called law, which has been bequeathed to us by slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and royalty, has taken the place of those stone monsters, before whom human victims used to be immolated, and whom slavish savages dared not even touch lest they should be slain by the thunderbolts of heaven.

I respect the courts, but the Supreme Court is only that - the supreme of the courts. It is not the supreme being. It cannot overrule God. When it comes to prayer, when it comes to life, and when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, the court cannot change what God has created.

It is recorded how towards the end of the eighteenth century a Muslim visitor to England was taken to see the House of Commons at work. He later wrote of his astonishment at finding the that the British Parliament actually made laws and fixed punishments for their infraction - because unlike Muslims the English had not accepted a divine law revealed from heaven and therefore had to resort to such unsatisfactory expedients. Muslims still understand the expression 'the rule of law' very differently than do most Westerners.

In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.