Legislation Quotes

“1. Bullying is not okay. Period.

2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.

3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.”
― Jim C. Hines

“I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.”
― Daniel Radcliffe

“If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.”
― Voltaire

“Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“we ask for too much salvation by legislation. All we need to do is empower individuals with the right philosophy and the right information to opt out en masse. (quoting Joel Salatin)”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

“Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“The laws vainly try to talk virtue to the mass, but it's just talk. The people who make the laws are really too biased towards evil and never carry out their fine talk -- they merely make a stab at it for the sake of appearances, that's all.”
― Marquis de Sade, Justine

“Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....

As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.”
― Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control

“Every culture institutionalizes certain forms of behavior that communicate and encourage certain forms of thinking and acting, thus moulding the character of its citizens. To the degree that the individual is made an object of constant mental manipulation, to the degree that cultural institutions may tend to weaken intellectual and spiritual strength, to the degree that knowledge of the mind is used to tame and condition people instead of educating them, to that degree does the culture itself produce men and women who are predisposed to accept an authoritarian way of life.”
― Joost A.M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

“No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by.”
― A.E. Samaan

“From the fact that the rule of law is a limitation upon all legislation, it follows that it cannot itself be a law in the same sense as the laws passed by the legislator. Constitutional provisions may make infringements of the rule of law more difficult. They may help to prevent inadvertent infringements by routine legislation. But the ultimate legislator can never limit his own powers by law, because he can always abrogate any law he has made. The rule of law is therefore not a rule of the law, but a rule concerning what the law ought to be, a meta-legal doctrine or a political ideal. It will be effective only in so far as the legislator feels bound by it. In a democracy this means that it will not prevail unless it forms part of the moral tradition of the community, a common ideal shared and unquestioningly accepted by the majority.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty

“My life is too short to focus on legislation when I could be making art. So I'm not a copyright reformer, I'm a copyright abolitionist.”
― Nina Paley

“More to the point, one cannot understand The Holocaust without understanding the intentions, ideology, and mechanisms that were put in place in 1933. The eugenics movement may have come to a catastrophic crescendo with the Hitler regime, but the political movement, the world-view, the ideology, and the science that aspired to breed humans like prized horses began almost 100 years earlier. More poignantly, the ideology and those legal and governmental mechanisms of a eugenic world-view inevitably lead back to the British and American counterparts that Hitler’s scientists collaborated with. Posterity must gain understanding of the players that made eugenics a respectable scientific and political movement, as Hitler’s regime was able to evade wholesale condemnation in those critical years between 1933 and 1943 precisely because eugenics had gained international acceptance. As this book will evidence, Hitler’s infamous 1933 laws mimicked those already in place in the United States, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Canada.
So what is this scientific and political movement that for 100 years aspired to breed humans like dogs or horses? Eugenics is quite literally, as defined by its principal proponents, an attempt at “directing evolution” by controlling any aspect of human existence that affects human heredity. From its onset, Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and the man credited with the creation of the science of eugenics, knew that the cause of eugenics had to be observed with religious fervor and dedication. As the quote on the opening pages of this book illustrates, a eugenicist must “intrude, intrude, intrude.” A vigilant control over anything and everything that affects the gene pool is essential to eugenics. The policies could not allow for the individual to enjoy self-government or self-determination any more than a horse breeder can allow the animals to determine whom to breed with. One simply cannot breed humans like horses without imbuing the state with the level of control a farmer has over its livestock, not only controlling procreation, but also the diet, access to medical services, and living conditions.”
― A.E. Samaan, H.H. Laughlin: American Scientist, American Progressive, Nazi Collaborator

“The Nazis destroyed the independence of the press by passing series of draconian laws and it seems we are exactly imitating the same with the freedom of the internet by passing Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill.”
― Arzak Khan

“• Scientific and medical studies, research or evidence is either distorted and misrepresented, or disputed or outright ignored by opponents whose views are threatened by the facts, in public shows of articles, statements, websites and even legislation. Scientific facts are ignored or dismissed as being ‘a liberal agenda’ or ‘merely propaganda’.”
― Christina Engela, The Pink Community - The Facts

“Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.
Hozhet was perplexed. "Make laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws."
There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term of office as possible.”
― H. Beam Piper, A Slave Is A Slave

“A Locrian who proposed any new law stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“But in general the people who I think would be moved by art, moved to change legislation, don't read novels, don't read poems, and don't really care that someone's written a book about a place like Dozier.”
― Colson Whitehead

“There has never been a more necessary time for law enforcement officers who reveal misconduct to be protected. By rising to uphold our Nation's values, ethical law enforcement officers choose a conflict for which no education, experience, or training can prepare them. They discover their communities breached and their opponent already beyond their gates. They confront criminals, intimidators, and tyrants that disguise themselves wearing the same badge they hold so dear. They advance against others who would otherwise seek to abuse the public, control the narrative, investigate themselves or obscure the truth beneath a facade of pursuing the greater good. Afterward, they often find themselves cast out, lost, and silenced permanently from their profession for doing nothing more than what we asked of them: Policing.”
― Austin Handle

“Barrel shrouds were listed. Barrel shrouds are just pieces of metal that go over the barrel so you don’t accidentally touch the hot part. They became an instantaneous felony too. Collapsible stocks make it so you can adjust your rifle to different-size shooters, that way a tall guy and his short wife can shoot the same gun. Nope. EVIL FEATURE! Pistol grip sounds scary, but it’s just a handle. It’s simply how you hold it. Having your wrist straight or at an angle doesn’t make the weapon any more dangerous. This nonsense has been a running joke in the gun community ever since the ban passed. When U.S. Representative Carolyn McCarthy was asked by a reporter what a barrel shroud was, she replied, “I think, I believe it’s a shoulder thing that goes up.”5 Oh good. I’m glad that thousands of law-abiding Americans unwittingly committed felonies because they had a cosmetic piece of sheet metal on their barrel, which has no bearing whatsoever on crime,”
― Larry Correia, In Defense of the Second Amendment

“I would rather contend with an honest asshole than a duplicitous diplomat.”
― A.E. Samaan

“By the turn of the twentieth century, every state in the South had laws on the books that disenfranchised blacks and discriminated against them in virtually ever sphere of life, lending sanction to a racial ostracism that extended to schools, churches, housing, jobs, restrooms, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, orphanages, prisons, funeral homes, morgues, and cemeteries. Politicians competed with each other by proposing and passing every more stringent, oppressive, and downright ridiculous legislation (such as laws specifically prohibiting blacks and whites from playing chess together.)”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Now, in cross-examination, the witnesses Asquith, George, Grey, Simon, Runciman, and indeed nearly all the plaintiffs, have confessed that they have been guilty from time to time of legislation, or proposals for legislation, of which the main purpose was to make people do something which they did not wish to do, or prevent people from doing something they did wish to do. Few of them could point to an item in their legislative programmes which had any other purpose, and, with the single exception of Mr. Haddock, they have no legislation to suggest of which the purpose is to allow people to do something which they cannot do already. On the contrary, it appears, they are as anxious as any other party in Parliament to make rules and regulations for the eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing of the British citizen... Mr. Haddock's own programme is simple: (a) to propose no legislation unless its purpose is to allow people to do what they like, and (b) to support no legislation whose purpose is to stop people from doing what they like.
"Which is the Liberal Party?”
― A.P. Herbert, Uncommon Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume

“I suppose that our intent is good. But sadly, our wisdom is short. For to seek the feeble constraints of any sort of crafted legislation (despite how ingeniously crafted it might be) as a means of reigning in the horrors of our world is similar to an attempt to build a dam sufficient to hold back the whole of the ocean. And I would contend that that seems to be something of a fool’s errand born of our desire to bury our heads in the legislative sand rather than peer into the darkness of men’s hearts. For we must change the hearts of men if we are to alter their actions. And if we are to do that with any kind of effectiveness at all, we must start in the hardest place imaginable…and that is in the heart that lays inside of us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The salient and undeniable truth about cryptography is that no measure of violence or proscriptive legislation will ever solve a math problem.”
― Jacob Riggs

“The court ruled that the ADA does in fact cover internet-based businesses. Deciding otherwise would lead to absurd results, like excluding services provided door-to-door or over the phone. Many companies provided services over the phone or door-to-door in 1990 when Congress passed the ADA, and Congress expected the statue to cover these "places." The court affirmed that Congress intended for the ADA to be a broad statute that evolves with technology. "Now that the Internet plays such a critical role in the personal and professional lives of Americans, excluding disabled persons from access to covered entities that use it as their principal means of reaching the public would defeat the purpose of this important civil rights legislation.”
― Haben Girma, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law

“Law restrains cruel people, love reforms cruelty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law

“Technology, social media, in particular, has given people the voice they have been longing for. How I use it is another story. Considering the power of words, we should be careful with what we share else it becomes a problem for stringent legislation to fix.”
― DON SANTO

“If you are a leader who fears the truth so much so that you have to legislate a lie, the truth is that you’re a coward in a suit who votes out of fear.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough