Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.

Principle #6: Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego; in politics it must end in anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and Individualist.

Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .

A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.