Legislators Quotes - Page 7

• The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat.

  Thomas Paine

  Wise, Men, Ideas

  The Rights of Man pt. 1 (1791)

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• [The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations, as a being superior to time and place.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Generations, Poet

  Rasselas ch. 10 (1759)

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• The legislator should keep two things constantly before his eyes: 1. The pure theory developed to its minutest details; 2. The particular condition of actual things which he designs to reform.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Eye, Two, Design

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 16, 1792.

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• When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest...are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress.

  Howard Zinn

  Fall, Challenges, Roles

  "Are We Politicians or Citizens?" by Howard Zinn, progressive.org. May 1, 2007.

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• For all laws are general judgements, or sentences of the legislator; as also every particular judgement is a law to him whose case is judged.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Law, Judgement, Cases

  Thomas Hobbes (2005). “Leviathan, Parts I and II”, p.212, Broadview Press

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• That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

  George Mason

  Men, Judging, Office

  "The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, and Colonies Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America" compiled and edited by Newton Thorpe, Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1909.

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• Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.

  John Rawls

  Vote, Interest, Ideals

  John RAWLS (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.284, Harvard University Press

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• It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Light, Order, People

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just's speech to the National Convention (December 27, 1792), as quoted in "Oeuvres Completes de Saint-Just", Volume 1, edited by Charles Vellay (p. 383), 1908.

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• The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Men, Law, Desire

  "Discours sur la Constitution à donner à la France". Speech to the National Convention, April 24, 1793.

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• From dwarf tossing to drug taking: The legislator has no place in voluntary exchanges between consenting adults, as dodgy and as dangerous as these might be.

  Ilana Mercer

  Dwarves, Drug, Adults

  "In Defense of Jacko's Doctor". www.ilanamercer.com. November 11, 2011.

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• I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Division, Politics

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.154, Hackett Publishing

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• The legislator learns that when you talk a lot, you get in trouble. You have to listen a lot to make deals.

  Bob Woodward

  Literature, Trouble, Deals

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• Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mean, Men, Thinking

  Civil Disobedience (1849)

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• I will choose what enters me, what becomes flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. If I give it to you, I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.

  Marge Piercy

  Giving, Choices, Mind

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• Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash--for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Fashion, Party, Past

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.232

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• A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

  Henry Fielding

  Law, Forgotten, Neglect

  Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott (1831). “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”, p.395

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• Whatever is worthy to be loved for anything is worthy of preservation. A wise and dispassionate legislator, if any such should ever arise among men, will not condemn to death him who has done or is likely to do more service than injury to society. Blocks and gibbets are the nearest objects with legislators, and their business is never with hopes or with virtues.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Wise, Block, Men

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen: Richard I and the Abbot of Boxley. The Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney. King Henry IV and Sir Arnold Savage. Southey and Porson. Oliver Cromwel and Walter Noble. Aeschines and Phocion. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil. King James I and Isaac Casaubon. Marchese Pallavicini and Walter Landor. General Kleber and some French officers. Bonaparte and the president of the senate. Bishop Burnet and Humphrey Hardcastle. Peter Leopold and the President Du”, p.62

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• In the middle-class United States, a veneer of "alternative lifestyles" disguises the reality that, here as everywhere, women's apparent "choices" whether or not to have children are still dependent on the far from neutral will of male legislators, jurists, a male medical and pharmaceutical profession, well-financed lobbies, including the prelates of the Catholic Church, and the political reality that women do not as yet have self-determination over our bodies and still live mostly in ignorance of our authentic physicality, our possible choices, our eroticism itself.

  Adrienne Rich

  Determination, Children, Ignorance

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• Legislators could certainly do with a school of morals.

  Simon Bolivar

  School, Moral

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• I think the idea that the hedge fund manager gets lower taxes than the taxi driver or the physics professor is insane. The legislators who leave that policy in place are derelict in their duties to be rational and fair. There are plenty of them in both political parties. It's totally outrageous.

  Charlie Munger

  Party, Thinking, Ideas

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• And thus the community perpetually retains a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody, even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish, or so wicked, as to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the subject.

  John Locke

  Community, Design, Liberty

  John Locke (2009). “The Second Treatise on Civil Government”, p.77, Prometheus Books

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• The same things are best both for individuals and for states, and these are the things which the legislator ought to implant in the minds of his citizens.

  Aristotle

  Education, Mind, Citizens

  Aristotle (2013). “The Essential Aristotle”, p.383, Simon and Schuster

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• Women who are with child should be careful of themselves; they should take exercise and have a nourishing diet. The first of these prescriptions the legislator will easily carry into effect by requiring that they should take a walk daily to some temple, where they can worship the gods who preside over birth. Their minds, however, unlike their bodies, they ought to keep quiet, for the offspring derive their natures from their mothers as plants do from earth.

  Aristotle

  Education, Mother, Children

  Aristotle, (2016). “Aristotle's Politics: Writings from the Complete Works: Politics, Economics, Constitution of Athens”, p.208, Princeton University Press

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• That the equalization of property exercises an influence on political society was clearly understood even by some of the old legislators. Laws were made by Solon and others prohibiting an individual from possessing as much land as he pleased.

  Aristotle

  Exercise, Law, Land

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.56, Aristotle

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• Some things the legislator must find ready to his hand in a state, others he must provide. And therefore we can only say: May our state be constituted in such a manner as to be blessed with the goods of which fortune disposes (for we acknowledge her power): whereas virtue and goodness in the state are not a matter of chance but the result of knowledge and purpose. A city can be virtuous only when the citizens who have a share in the government are virtuous, and in our state all the citizens share in the government.

  Aristotle

  Blessed, Government, Hands

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3135, Delphi Classics

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