Carroll Quigley Quotes

The government has a responsibility to protect society, to help maintain society. That's why we have laws... The rule of law creates a set of standards for our behavior.

You can't have a limited government if the family breaks down.

Well the first order of government is to preserve the public order and safety.

Government … becomes the rational art of minimizing the inevitable conflicts of primal irrational wills against one another and against the forces of nature at large

A mob cannot be a permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

Civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of a people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods.

This idea that America is somehow on the verge of collapse, this vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesn't really jibe with the experience of most people.

Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason.

The continued existence of society depends upon private property.

The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.

Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.

No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

Because by definition they lack any sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so.

The worst effect of tutelage is that it negates self-discipline, and therefore people suddenly released from it are almost bound to make fools of themselves.

There can be no self-government without self-discipline. There can be no self-government without self-control. There can be no liberty unless it is grounded in moral discipline and the ability to do what is right.

It seems evident that the basis for civil safety is homogeneity. A culture which is socially uniform is pretty well devoid of informal violence.

I have a great objection to seeing anyone, particularly anyone whom I care about, lose his self-control.

I thought The Limits of Control could be interpreted in two ways: as the limits of one's self-control; and as the limits of allowing other people's control over one's - consciousness - which I kind of thought was a double meaning that was appropriate.

When government does its job properly people are free to do theirs.

The problem is that relativism provides no sure foundation for a safe and orderly society.

History will also give occasion to expatiate on the advantage of civil orders and constitutions; how men and their properties are protected by joining in societies and establishing government; their industry encouraged and rewarded, arts invented, and life made more comfortable; the advantages of liberty, mischiefs of licentiousness, benefits arising from good laws and a due execution of justice. Thus may the first principles of sound politics be fixed in the minds of youth.

I define self-control, in the beginning of life, as the choice of achieving what I really want by doing things I really don't want to do. Once this becomes a habit, discipline becomes the choice of achieving what I really want by doing the very things I now want to do! I really believe that a disciplined life becomes a joy--but only after we have worked hard to practice it.

A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.

Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country.