Prohibition Quotes

• Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

  Mark Twain

  Dark, Doors, Sobriety

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.383, Courier Corporation

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• When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognised. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.

  John D. Rockefeller

  Drinking, Believe, Wine

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• Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Weed, Men, Blow

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• Prohibition has made nothing but trouble

  Al Capone

  Mafia, Trouble, Made

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• Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill; it's against nature.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, Freedom, Water

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• Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

  Albert Einstein (1949). “The World as I See it”, Citadel Press

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• Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.

  Will Rogers

  College, Race, Years

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• For every prohibition you create, you also create an underground.

  Jello Biafra

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does.

  James Carriger Paine

  Libertarian Party, Alcohol, Drug

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• Prohibitions create the desire they were intended to cure.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Desire, Cures

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• The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.

  Albert Einstein

  Country, Weed, War

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.6, Broadway Books

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• Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.

  W. C. Fields

  Food, Drinking, Beer

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 

  The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.

  Humphrey Bogart

  Drinking, Book, Beer

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• A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Weed, Blow, Marijuana

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• It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.

  Henry George

  Religious, Men, Rights

  Henry George, A. C. Auchmuty (1908). “Gems from Henry George: being memorable passages from the writings and addresses of the author of "Progress and poverty"”

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• Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.

  Mark Twain

  Sky, People, Gold

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• Communism is like prohibition, it is a good idea, but it won't work.

  Will Rogers

  Ideas, Communism, Communism And Socialism

  'Weekly Articles' (1981) vol. 3, p. 93 (first published 1927)

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• Liquor prohibition led to the rise of organized crime in America, and drug prohibition has led to the rise of the gang problems we have now.

  Drew Carey

  Humor, America, Alcohol

  "Stand-Up Guy". Interview with Nick Gillespie and Steve Kurtz, reason.com. November 1997.

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• I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

  Winston Churchill

  Military, Drinking, Taken

  In Quentin Reynolds By Quentin Reynolds (1964) ch. 11

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• When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

  Henny Youngman

  Crazy, Drinking, Reading

  Quoted in Rocky Mountain News, 15 July 1994

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• Prohibition didn't work in the Garden of Eden. Adam ate the apple.

  Vicente Fox

  Garden, Eden, Apples

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• Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use... Therefore, I support legislation amending Federal law to eliminate all Federal criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce [28g] of marijuana.

  Jimmy Carter

  Weed, Marijuana, Law

  U.S. President in a message to the U.S. Congress, 1977.

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• Obviously crime pays, or there'd be no crime.

  G. Gordon Liddy

  Pay, Crime

  "Does Crime Pay" in The Scandal Annual by the Paragon Project, p. 7, 1987.

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• One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.

  Milton Friedman

  Drug, Roles, Corruption

  33 Copy quote

• There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.

  George Carlin

  Sex, Attitude, Ideas

  "Carlin's response? More than 7 dirty words", www.today.com. March 13, 2004.

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