Prohibition Quotes - Page 9

• Thirteen states with a population less than that of New York State alone can prevent repeal [of prohibition] until Halley's comet returns. One might as well talk about a summer vacation on Mars.

  Clarence Darrow

  Summer, New York, Vacation

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• And may I not be allowed to ... read in the character of the American people, in their devotion to true liberty and to the Constitution which is its palladium [protection], ... a Government which watches over ... the equal interdict [prohibition] against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state.

  James Madison

  Character, Government, People

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• Paradoxically, the toddler's "No" is also a preliminary to his saying yes. It is a sign that he is getting ready to convert his mother's restrictions and prohibitions into the rules for behavior that will belong to him.

  Louise J. Kaplan

  Mother, Saying Yes, Toddler

  Louise J. Kaplan (1978). “Oneness and separateness: from infant to individual”, Touchstone

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• Under the First Amendment's prohibition of the establishment of religion, the Court has steadily made religion a matter for the private individual by driving it out of the public arena.

  Robert Bork

  Christian, Religious, Matter

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• Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.

  Tim LaHaye

  Christian, Religious, Writing

  Tim F. LaHaye, Beverly LaHaye (1994). “A Nation Without a Conscience”

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• During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections.

  Martin Scorsese

  Hands, Cities, Ideas

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• America has maintained a prohibition on negotiating with terrorists for good reason.

  James Inhofe

  America, Reason, Terrorist

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• Up until Prohibition, an apple grown in America was far less likely to be eaten than to wind up in a barrel of cider. ("Hard" cider is a twentieth-century term, redundant before then since virtually all cider was hard until modern refrigeration allowed people to keep sweet cider sweet.)

  Michael Pollan

  Sweet, Wind, Apples

  Michael Pollan (2001). “The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World”, p.44, Random House

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• There are no violent gangs fighting over aspirin territories. There are no violent gangs fighting over whisky territories or computer territories or anything else that's legal. There are only criminal gangs fighting over territories covering drugs, gambling, prostitution, and other victimless crimes. Making a non-violent activity a crime creates a black market, which attracts criminals and gangs, which turns what was once a relatively harmless activity affecting a small group of people into a widespread epidemic of drug use and gang warfare.

  Harry Browne

  Fighting, Drug Use, Epidemics

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• The Compromise of 1850 provided that the prohibition of slavery should be left up to the individual States, thus thwarting the Canaanites in their attempts to make this problem an excuse for federal intervention and a cause of war between the States.

  Eustace Mullins

  War, Slavery, Causes

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• In the 1920s, we thought the problems associated with alcohol could be solved by police and jails. Prohibition taught us we were wrong. The strategy of the present drug war is Prohibition redux.

  Rodney S. Quinn

  War, Taught Us, Jail

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• The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Spiritual, Men, Ideas

  "A Defense of Indian Culture". Essay by Sri Aurobindo, as quoted in Sisirkumar Mitra "The Vision of India", 1947.

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• Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life.

  Harriet Martineau

  Spiritual, Self, Desire

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• I knew that the Hague Convention prohibited the use of poison in war. I didn't know the details of the terms of the Convention, but I did know of that prohibition.

  Otto Hahn

  War, Details, Poison

  Otto Hahn (1970). “My life: the autobiography of a scientist”, MacDonald

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• Nobody tells the history of marijuana and its prohibition like Russ Belville does. He has a special talent for presenting scholarship in a remarkably engaging way. That’s why I turned to Russ when I needed someone to present on the subject to the annual staff retreat of the Drug Policy Alliance. And it’s why I repeatedly recommend him for speaking and media opportunities. He’s good!

  Ethan Nadelmann

  Marijuana, Opportunity, Media

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• Obviously, the state's responsibility should be to legislate rules for a well-ordered society. It has no right or duty to creep into the bedrooms of the nation.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Responsibility, Bedroom, Crime

  "The Globe and Mail" Newspaper, (p. 61), December 12, 1967.

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• Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution.

  Jimmy Carter

  Christian, Jesus, Eye

  Jimmy Carter (2005). “Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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• By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.

  Thomas Szasz

  Practice, Agents, Medical

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.167, Syracuse University Press

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• I agree that marijuana laws are overdue for an overhaul. I also favor the medical use of marijuana -- if it's prescribed by a physician. I cannot understand why the federal government should interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, nor why it would ignore the will of a majority of voters who have legally approved such legislation.

  Abigail Van Buren

  Marijuana, Law, Doctors

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• Books of apostates, heretics, schismatics, and all other writers defending heresy or schism or in any attacking the foundations of religion, are altogether prohibited.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Book, Religion, Foundation

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• For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.

  Lysander Spooner

  Truth, Government, Vices

  Lysander Spooner (2006). “Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

  Eric Hoffer

  Respect, Freedom, Mean

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There's a prohibition against taking it away.

  Alberto Gonzales

  Constitution, Grants

  "Gonzales: 'There Is No Express Grant of Habeas Corpus In The Constitution'". Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings Transcript, thinkprogress.org. January 19, 2007.

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• I think that, that it would be hard for New Hampshire to vote for somebody who was a fundamentalist minister, affable as he is. He does seem to actually want to write, for example, a prohibition against abortion into the Constitution , which Ronald Reagan, for all his talking about it, never tried to do one time.

  Mike Huckabee

  Writing, Thinking, Talking

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• By requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

  John Paul Stevens

  Punishment, Suffering, Trends

  Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35, www.law.cornell.edu. 2008.

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