A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows.

What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.

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

Four innate sentiments dispose people to a universal moral sense. These are sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty.

Many Americans have lost confidence in the way our criminal courts assess guilt and innocence. Whatever one thinks of the verdicts, the recent trials of O.J. Simpson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and various defendants in preschool molestation cases have been lengthy, lawyer-dominated soap operas in which the search for truth has been subordinated to the manipulation of procedures.

It's no surprise that academics in this country have been generally suspicious of business or that in a time like this, when general public confidence in the corporation has fallen, the expressions of hostility grow sharper.

The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.