James Q. Wilson Quotes

The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.

During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.

As I came to power peacefully, so shall I keep it.

For the victor peace means the preservation of the position of power which he has secured. For the vanquished it means resigning himself to the position left to him.

Conquered, we conquer.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.

… the most disastrous blow ever struck at the constitutional power of Congress

War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement

All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everbody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.

War is the supreme form of prestige.

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object

A point has been reached where the peoples of the Americas must take cognizance of growing ill-will, of marked trends toward aggression, of increasing armaments, of shortening tempers--a situation which has in it many of the elements that lead to the tragedy of general war.... Peace is threatened by those who seek selfish power.

Peace renders nations happier and men weaker.

Power seldome grows old at Court.

To me, the movie is about power.

It's precisely because America is not a democracy that we have survived! It's precisely because majority rule does have checks and balances on it. It's precisely because this is a representative republic that we have survived.

Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!

To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory.

I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, 'Cause every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

The only protection against INJUSTICE in man is POWER?Physical, financial and scientific.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

A prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline; because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.