James Cromwell Quotes

Whenever you have people in power, they try to control people. It's not necessarily a bad thing to control people - you can control people for good, you can control people for bad, but you're gonna try and control people.

The original intent of laws was to get the masses of people to accept the limitations superimposed upon them as being the result of their own misbehavior.

But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.

They defined what was private and what was public and they would move it whenever they wished.

Given free play, the best policemen act badly more often than not, which is why they are given free play on any large scale only when their employers discern some social utility in their acting badly.

You can't, in a government agency, regulate everything that moves ... you can't regulate everything ... you must strike a balance.

If you use power too loosely, you lose power.

The word to regulate implies in its nature full power over the thing to be regulated, it excludes, necessarily, the action of all others that would perform the same operation on the same thing.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

I have been trying to understand the regulators.

A regulator is supposed to create and enforce a standard.

Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind.

Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.

The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people.

Philip is being very vocal about it. For me, I don't think the story isn't at all anti-religious in any way. I think what's it more against is the control and the misuse of power that any organised religion, or any political organisation exercises over the people they're supposed to represent. I think that, for me, is what's important in the movie.

I'm scared of people with power making the decision.

Whenever the law gets its hands on you, those who use the law to their own advantage will also turn it against you. Don't put your trust in the laws of men, Alvin. They were designed by strong men to improve their power over weaker ones.

I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.

If people disobey, don't ask what is wrong with them, ask what's wrong with their leaders.

How do you prevent people from doing inappropriate things? We can write laws. But at the end of the day, I actually wonder what the board was doing.

Your liberals and radicals all want to govern. They want to try it their way- to show that people will be happier if the power is wielded in a different way or for different purposes. But how do they know? Have they ever tried it? No, it's merely their guess.

That's why every society on the planet has very definite rules, ideas about how sex should be regulated, how sex should be expressed, what's okay, what's not okay. And I guess we do live in a place, and have for a long time, where there's more openness and there's more willingness to tolerate different kinds of behavior, but with that comes people creating other rules and other kinds of controls. It's always going to be a question of what's acceptable and what isn't and what's the danger point and what rouses people's contempt and what people are allowed to get away with.

People will be surprised at the eagerness with which we went aboutpretending to rouse from its slumber a sexuality which every­thing-our discourses, our customs, our institutions, our regulations, our knowledges-was busy producing in the light of day and broadcasting to noisy accompaniment.

A portion of the multitude must ever be coerced.

If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.