Legislature Quotes

• No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Trust, Freedom

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• No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

  Jesse Jackson

  Dream, Government, Goal

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• When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

  William O. Douglas

  Exercise, Rights, Hands

  "Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 27, 1953.

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• [I]t is more convenient to prevent the passage of a law, than to declare it void after it has passed.

  James Madison

  Law, Void, Congress

  James Madison (1904). “The Writings of James Madison: 1787-1790”

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• The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.

  James Madison

  Drawing, Spheres, Vortex

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in 1788”, p.229

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• I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.

  Mark Twain

  Pride, Thinking, World

  Address on the 4th of July, delivered 4 July 1899, London, England

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• The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.

  J. William Fulbright

  Strong, Virtue, Can Do

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• The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.

  Walt Whitman

  College, America, People

  Walt Whitman (2009). “The Americanness of Walt Whitman”, p.50, Wildside Press LLC

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• Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

  Samuel Butler

  Men, Animal, Laughing

  "1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said". Book by Robert Byrne, 1988.

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• Public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Strong, Public Opinion, Ten Commandments

  Charles Dudley Warner (2006). “My Summer in a Garden: Easyread Large Edition”, p.108, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.

  John Adams

  Patriotic, Government, Hands

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila”, p.76, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

  Edmund Burke

  Law, Giving, Community

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.285, Penguin

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• Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is good for the whole; but it is not the declaration of parliament that makes it so.

  James Otis

  Parliament, Congress, Cases

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• The legislature, like the executive, has ceased to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle...

  H. L. Mencken

  Honesty, Men, Law

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

  Samuel Chase

  Omnipotence, States, State Legislatures

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• Legislatures represent people, not acres or trees.

  Earl Warren

  People, Tree, Acres

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• The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.

  James Madison

  Men, Hands, People

  James Madison, John Jay (1847). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.255

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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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• The legislature are a little more difficult to educate than the governor is.

  Judy Martz

  Education, Littles, Difficult

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• As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office.

  Molly Ivins

  Texas, Office, Political

  Molly Ivins (1992). “Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?”, Vintage

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• It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them.

  Bob Ehrlich

  Thoughtful, People, Citizens

  State of the State address, www.latimes.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, States

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

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• But the Republican right-wing agenda, these people - Arnold and his patrons - felt it could be accomplished by circumventing the Legislature and spending money and organizing and giving sound bites.

  Warren Beatty

  Wings, People, Giving

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• No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high.

  Jesse Jackson

  Dream, Surrender, Should

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• It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please . . . . Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Evil, Judging

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