Justice is the insurance we have on our lives, and obedience is the premium we pay for it.

Penn’s aphorism frames social order in the language of contract and risk. “Justice” is imagined as a collective safeguard—something that protects life and security not by chance but by a dependable public system. Yet that protection is not free: “obedience” (to law, conscience, or rightful authority) is the recurring “premium” citizens pay to keep the system functioning. The comparison implies reciprocity: if people refuse lawful restraint, the protective “policy” of justice lapses; if rulers dispense justice unfairly, the bargain is broken from above. The line thus argues for a moral economy of governance in which liberty depends on disciplined, principled compliance.