Quotes by James Q. Wilson

About James Q. Wilson:

James Quinn Wilson was an American academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration. Most of his career was spent as a professor at UCLA and Harvard. He coauthored a leading university textbook on American government, as well as many scholarly books and articles, and op-ed essays. He gained national attention for a 1982 article introducing the broken windows theory. Wilson served on many national committees and boards, and was elected president of the American Political Science Association.
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Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powe...

James Q. Wilson

I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for freedom.

James Q. Wilson

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

James Q. Wilson

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

James Q. Wilson

I believe we ought to subsidize some health care for the poor, but Medicare subsidizes everyone's health care.

James Q. Wilson

There are no more liberals They've all been mugged.

James Q. Wilson

I will have an administrative system where there is no way to extricate red tape.

James Q. Wilson

In terms of other functions, we are making a mistake about insisting on a public school monopoly.

James Q. Wilson

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

James Q. Wilson

There is no way the American public will sit still for the banning of or putting any significant restrictions on the kinds of guns they want.

James Q. Wilson

There aren't any liberals left in New York. They've all been mugged by now.

James Q. Wilson

If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.

James Q. Wilson

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.

James Q. Wilson

I mean that the function of the police is to solve problems that have law-enforcement consequences in a way that is based on a genuine partnership with the neighborhood in both the venting of the problem and the discussion of the solution.

James Q. Wilson

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.

James Q. Wilson

Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.

James Q. Wilson

Crime is the price society pays for abandoning character.

James Q. Wilson

Author Bio

  • NameJames Q. Wilson
  • DescriptionAmerican political scientist
  • BornMay 27, 1931
  • DiedMarch 2, 2012
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPolitical Scientist; Criminologist
  • AwardsPresidential Medal Of Freedom