State Legislatures Quotes

• No state legislature ever built a great university.

  James E. Rogers, Jr.

  Legislature, States, University

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• All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.

  H. L. Mencken

  Zoos, Freedom, Political

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.365, Vintage

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• The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Real, Men, Hands

  Diary entry. "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States". Book edited by Charles Richard Williams, The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, March 11, 1888.

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• I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State legislature.

  Samuel Chase

  Omnipotence, Legislature, States

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• What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

  Christopher Peterson

  Real, Decision, Democracy

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• There are legions of [Aquarian, New Age, One World Religion] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country.

  Marilyn Ferguson

  Country, School, World Religions

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• No deliberative body is manifestly less qualified to make decisions about public education than our state Legislature. With a few shining exceptions, most of these clowns don't read, can't write, and clearly can't add.

  Carl Hiaasen

  Writing, Shining, Decision

  Carl Hiaasen (2014). “Dance of the Reptiles: Rampaging Tourists, Marauding Pythons, Larcenous Legislators, Crazed Celebrities, and Tar-Balled Beaches: Selected Columns”, p.93, Vintage

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• If the General Government should be left dependent on the State Legislatures, it would be happy for us if we had never met in this room.

  John Dickinson

  Government, Rooms, Would Be

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• I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.

  Harry Shearer

  School, Years, Two

  Interview with Kenneth Plume, www.ign.com. February 10, 2000.

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• ...Only physicians are likely to be regarded as competent to judge the qualifications of potential physicians, so licensing boards in the various states...are typically composed..of physicians,...members of the AMA. The boards, or the state legislatures...give the AMA the power to influence the number of persons admitted to practice (by) lengthy training,...(and) the list of 'approved' schools and hospitals (which) is generally identical with the list issued by the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals of the AMA.

  Milton Friedman

  School, Dark, Practice

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• An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Thinking, Law, Able

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.312, Library of Alexandria

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• And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

  John Grisham

  New York, People, Innocence

  "Piers Morgan Tonight", www.cnn.com. December 9, 2011.

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• there ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What for instance would avail restrictions on the authority of the state legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? . . . This power must either be a direct negative on the state laws, or an authority in the federal courts, to over-rule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of union.

  James Madison

  Law, Giving, Negative

  Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison (2010). “The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States”, p.508, Modern Library

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• For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects.

  James Madison

  Too Much, Reason, Members

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.219

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• We were just at the beginnings of a recovery [in 2010]. And the, you know, whoever is president at that point is gonna get hit and his party's gonna get hit. That then means that suddenly you've got a redistricting in which a lot of state legislatures are now Republican. They draw lines that give a huge structural advantage in subsequent elections.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Recovery, Mean

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• We're in the hands of the state legislature and God, but at the moment, the state legislature has more to say than God.

  Ed Koch

  Hands, Moments, Legislature

  "449 Stupid Things Democrats Have Said". Book by Ted Rueter, 2009.

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• But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.

  James McGreevey

  Running, Public Opinion, Firsts

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• I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

  Bernie Sanders

  Political, Citizens United, Campaigns

  Interview with Tavis Smiley, www.sanders.senate.gov. February 5, 2013.

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• Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

  Diane Ravitch

  Teacher, Legislature, States

  Diane Ravitch (2011). “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education”, p.224, Basic Books

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• We have to stand up for these issues when it's tough, and that's what I've done. I did it when I was in the state legislature, sponsoring the Illinois version of the DREAM Act, so that children who were brought here through no fault of their own are able to go to college, because we actually want well-educated kids in our country who are able to succeed and become part of this economy and part of the American dream.

  Barack Obama

  Dream, Country, Children

  The California Democratic Debate in Los Angeles, www.realclearpolitics.com. January 31, 2008.

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• The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.

  William Rawle

  Gun, Power, People

  "A view of the Constitution of the United States of America". Book by William Rawle, 1829.

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• The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

  James Madison

  Constitution, Combination, Legislature

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.47

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• I am unable to conceive that the state legislatures which must feel so many motives to watch, and which possess so many means of counteracting the federal legislature, would fail either to detect or to defeat a conspiracy of the latter against the liberties of their common constituencies.

  James Madison

  Mean, Liberty, Federalism

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• The appointment of senators by the state legislatures . . . is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the state governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government, as must secure the authority of the former.

  James Madison

  Government, Agency, Giving

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Nothing can be more evident, than that an exclusive power of regulating elections for the National Government, in the hands of the State Legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy . . . . It is to little purpose to say that a neglect or omission of this kind [not letting the feds have elections], would be unlikely to take place. The constitutional possibility of the thing, without an equivalent for the risk, is an unanswerable objection.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Hands, Omission, Government

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