Social Order Quotes

Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness….government in its best state is a necessary evil; in its worse state an intolerable one.

Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, ‘This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion at all!!!’ But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

All power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner …. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Better a hundred years of tyranny than one day of anarchy.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Law is the greatest human invention. All the rest give man mastery over his world, but law gives him mastery over himself.

Good laws, if they are not obeyed, do not constitute good government.

Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.

Liberals despise the rule of law because it interferes with their ability to rule by mob. They love to portray themselves as the weak taking on the powerful. But it is the least powerful who suffer the most once the rule of law is gone.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.

The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like law, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.

Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.