Legislation Quotes - Page 11

• Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.

  Laurence Sterne

  Dancing, Gentleman, Excuse

  Richard Griffith, Laurence Sterne (1794). “The Posthumous Works of Laurence Sterne: ...”

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• The legislation of Quran will spread all over the world, because it agrees with the mind, logic and wisdom.

  Unknown

  Mind, World, Quran

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• Nobody is going to give away the farm in Kyoto. It is not anybody's to give away. And even if the United States Senate would actually ratify a bad treaty, anything called for under the treaty would require legislation passed through both houses.

  Thomas Schelling

  Kyoto Protocol, Giving, House

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• Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was assumed to be a fifth column in its midst... Ministers believedm with some justice, that Catholics retained an attachment to their exiled co-religionists, the princes of the House of Stuart. After the Battle of Culloden had confirmed Jacobitism's insignificance, however, government attitudes towards Catholicism began perceptibly and logically to relax.

  Linda Colley

  Attitude, Government, Attachment

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• Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and his rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.

  Mario Cuomo

  Religious, Government, Law

  "Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor's Perspective". John A. O'Brien Lecture in the University of Notre Dame's Department of Theology, archives.nd.edu. September 13, 1984.

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• I personally think money in politics on any level is horrible. I'd like to see a set amount and have every candidate spend it. Have it be completely transparent. But actually getting to that spot, as we have learned through all the legislation over the decades, is very difficult.

  Rick Santelli

  Thinking, Levels, Money In Politics

  "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. October 24, 2010.

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• I think that there's been a lot of people in Congress that didn't know all the ins and outs of the Constitution. I think we have a whole roomful of people that have record legislation in terms of quantity of pages that didn't read it.

  Rick Santelli

  Thinking, People, Records

  "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, www.nbcnews.com. October 24, 2010.

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• The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.

  Thomas Sowell

  Zero, Real, Law

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.55, Hoover Press

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• Rather than passing a thousand pages of tax reform legislation and restarting the tax code manipulation process, we should change the paradigm. It is time to eliminate the IRS and repeal the 16th Amendment.

  Jim Bridenstine

  Irs, Pages, Manipulation

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• There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage.

  June Jordan

  Communication, Men, Media

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• No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subject on which he is to legislate.

  James Madison

  Men, Sound, Degrees

  James Madison, John Jay (1847). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.216

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• The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others.

  Judith Martin

  Country, Freedom, Equality

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• Priestly was the first (unless it was Becarria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth--that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Happiness, Numbers, Foundation

  "The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham". p. 142,

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• Legislation and adjudication must follow, and conform to, the progress of society.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Law, Progress Of Society, Conform

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.684, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I'll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you'll have to say, "Stop here until your mom comes here." Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.

  Maya Angelou

  Love, Mom, Children

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• The presumption that the law can tell us what natural institution is supposed to be is a formula for totalitarianism. There's not equality in a family; there never is. And yet for that reason, the family is condemned as patriarchal. The goal of this sort of legislation is about the destruction of the traditional family, not just marriage.

  Francis George

  Law, Goal, Reason

  Source: www.realclearreligion.org

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• You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less.

  Ralph Nader

  Hard Work, Agency, Done

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. September 24, 2008.

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• Local and state governments have outrun the federal government. The EPA has served notice that it will enact a rule requiring CO2 reductions by major emitters in the absence of major legislation. But it's a blunt instrument that is a little more difficult to use than a legislative remedy.

  Al Gore

  Government, Use, Littles

  ""What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?"". Interview with John Dickerson, www.slate.com. December 8, 2009.

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• The existence of the EPA regulation will require large carbon polluters to look at their hole cards, and some of them have decided that they much prefer legislation.

  Al Gore

  Cards, Looks, Regulation

  ""What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?"". Interview with John Dickerson, www.slate.com. December 8, 2009.

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• Our present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence.

  Thomas Paine

  Law, Names, Perfect

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.61

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• So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Rude, Making Love, Criticism

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• We certainly ... hope that the Congress will act in an appropriate fashion and not waste its time with ineffectual, sham legislation on Keystone XL that has no impact on the price of gas and is irresponsible because it, as we've said before, tries to legislate the approval of a pipeline for which there is not even a route.

  Jay Carney

  Fashion, Impact, Trying

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• I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and I'm concerned that voting for this [anti-terrorism] legislation fundamentally violates that oath.

  Bernie Sanders

  Support, Voting, Constitution Of The United States

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• Whatever happens in Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood or Silicon Vally in the next ten years, it will be irrelevant if our families don't come together at a much higher level. Without a renaissance of family, no new candidate can rise to save us. No new legislation, policy or program will heal our land.

  Oliver DeMille

  Wall, Years, Land

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• I get out of all of these things that many of these candidates would rather take legislation to build a time machine and go back in time to where, uh, we had, you know, no women voting, slavery was cool. I mean, it's just kind of ridiculous.

  Thomas Roberts

  Mean, Voting, Machines

  "MSNBC's Thomas Roberts: GOP Wants to Go Back to When No Women Voted, 'Slavery Was Cool'" by Tim Graham, www.newsbusters.org. September 23, 2011.

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