Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.

Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.

Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

A society which denies the heart its role becomes, in very short order, a heartless society.

Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.