Legislature Quotes - Page 13

• One might plausibly contend that Congress violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers when it exonerates itself from the impositions of the laws it obligates people outside the legislature to obey.

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Law, People, Political

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• If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and nonviolence, democracy would not be worth a moment's purchase.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fighting, Sacrifice, Democracy

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Gandhiji Expects: What the Father of the Nation Expected of People's Representatives”

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• Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Men, Achieve

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Gandhiji Expects: What the Father of the Nation Expected of People's Representatives”

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• If I were president, I would want to spend a lot of time going to the legislatures and telling them about best practices, whether it's about fighting poverty, whether it's about educating kids. The states are the laboratories where we can see what works. And I think presidents can have a much better relationship with legislatures.

  John Kasich

  Kids, Fighting, Thinking

  "John Kasich: Hunting down undocumented immigrants is 'not what America is'". Interview with Gwen Ifill, www.pbs.org. August 19, 2015.

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• ... the State Legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this Government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power, than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a Federal Government admit the State Legislatures to be sure guardians of the people's liberty.

  James Madison

  Government, People, Liberty

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

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• Members of the legislature, people who have run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Running, Law, People

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• The legislature have anxiously provided for those most useful and deserving body of men, the seamen and marines of this country.

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Country, Marine, Men

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• That the Texas Legislature, that the Texas school boards, the Texas teachers, we collectively know best how to educate our children, rather than some bureaucrat in Washington.

  Rick Perry

  Education, Teacher, Children

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• Legislatures have no right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men. Test-laws are useless and ineffectual, unjust and tyrannical.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Men, Law, Atheism

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• Maybe this Democratic president[Barack Obama] did and can get comprehensive health care reform passed, but notice, Medicaid is not expanded in any of these dark red states. The Republican Party may not be able to repeal Obamacare, but it certainly, through its state legislatures and governorships, has managed to halt Obamacare`s full impact.

  Melissa Harris-Perry

  Party, Dark, Obamacare

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• The history of successful cases, some of which are in this museum, illustrates that often the regulators and legislatures don't wake up until some plaintiff gets a lawyers and digs out the cover-ups and the incriminating information about a safety defect in an automobile or another product.

  Ralph Nader

  Successful, Museums, Safety

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. This is the very essence of judicial duty.

  John Marshall

  Mean, Law, Essence

  Marbury v. Madison (1803)

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• It may pass for a maxim in State, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.

  Jonathan Swift

  Government, Hands, Administration

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.1109, Delphi Classics

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• In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Independent, Long, People

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.23, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Police officers today are a protected class, one no politician wants to oppose. Law enforcement interests may occasionally come up short on budgetary issues, but legislatures rarely if ever pass new laws to hold police more accountable, to restrict their powers, or to make them more transparent. In short, police today embody all of the threats the Founders feared were posed by standing armies, plus a few additional ones they couldn't have anticipated.

  Radley Balko

  Army, Class, Issues

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• There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Exercise, Hands, Method

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Sometimes, people forget my record of fiscal conservatism on major issues in the state legislature. The greatest example is my voting against the pension borrowing scheme in 1997.

  Leonard Lance

  Issues, People, Voting

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• Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the people who have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way.

  William Graham Sumner

  Wise, People, Annoyed

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• Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Office, Presidential, Lasts

  Lynn Sherr, Susan B. Anthony (1995). “Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words”, Crown

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• Hispanic gives us all one ultimate paternal cultural progenitor: Spain. The diverse cultures already on the American shores when the Europeans arrived, as well as those introduced because of the African slave trade, are completely obliterated by the term. Hispanic is nothing more than a concession made by the U. S. legislature when they saw they couldn't get rid of us. If we won't go away, why not at least Europeanize us, make us presentable guests at the dinner table, take away our feathers and rattles and civilize us once and for all.

  Ana Castillo

  Giving, Diversity, Going Away

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• Too much of our political debate...has become a race to the bottom. An exchange of insults and slanders more appropriate to reality television than a legislature.

  Jeanne Shaheen

  Reality, Race, Political

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• Your projects can often demonstrative new and innovative approaches that can be supported and eventually replicated with greater support from the public sector. Showing up and speaking up at city council and state legislature hearings are essential, but so is the project work.

  Mark Winne

  Cities, Speaking Up, Support

  "Outlook: The Futility of Food Banks". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. November 19, 2007.

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• In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is thereforeuseful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Art

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1937). “Essays, First and Second Series”, p.118, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Church, Looks

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.337, Simon and Schuster

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• We do need curriculum reform. And it should happen at the state and local level. That is where educational policy belongs, because if a parent is unhappy with what their child is being taught in school, they can go to that local school board or their state legislature, or their governor and get it changed.

  Marco Rubio

  Children, Educational, School

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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