Civility Quotes

“Nastiness devalues the speaker as well because the unwillingness to restrain the urge marks the speaker as less civilized, more animal-like.”
― Stephen L. Carter, Civility

“On the first day of law school, I always remind my new students of a fact that all of us know but most of us forget: the police officers who enforce our laws go armed. Why do they do so? Because it is possible that their efforts will be resisted. They might need their guns in order to make others obey the law--or accept the punishment for their disobedience. Consequently, every time we enact a new law, we create the possibility that violent means will be required to transform the new law's command into reality. What I tell my students is a lesson I learned from the late, great legal scholar Robert Cover: Law is violence.”
― Stephen L. Carter, Civility