The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.
Thomas Paine
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
Abraham Lincoln: Speech in the Illinois House of Representatives, Dec 18, 1840.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigor of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind.
Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776
Prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it, or even diminish it.
Mark Twain: Letter from New York to the Alta Californian, May 28, 1867.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain: Manuscript note, c.1882.
I'd rather that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober. With freedom we might in the end attain sobriety, but in the other alternative we should eventually lose both freedom and sobriety.
W.C. Magee (Archbishop of York): Sermon at Peterborough, 1868.
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish.
The passing of an unjust law is the suicide of authority.
Pastoral Letter of the American Roman Catholic Herarchy, Feb., 1920
Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.
Bertrand Russell: Saturday Review, 1951
While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
Charles Evans Hughes: U.S. Supreme Court Member, May 1908.
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.
Woodrow Wilson: Address, New York Press Club, May 9, 1912.
If you think of yourself as a decent, rational person, and you support the war on drugs, then you are misinformed... either about the war or about your decency and rationality.
Ray Aldridge: The WARSTOP pages, April, 1995.
It is necessary to be very intelligent in the work of repression. All opposition journals have been suppressed and all the anti-fascist organizations dissolved.
Benito Mussolini: Speech, May 26, 1926.
Humanitarianism is the expression of stupidity and cowardice.
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf.
A great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
Herbert C. Hoover: Speaking of Prohibition in a letter to William E. Borah, Feb. 28, 1928.
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist.
The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force.
Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf.
There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content.
P.J. Goebbels: Speech at Nurnberg, Aug. 20, 1926.
We hear about constitutional rights, free speech, and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist. You never hear a real American talk like that."
Frank Hague: N.Y. World-Telegram, April 2, 1938.
Watch this space for more wisdom and foolishness.If you have a particularly good quote of either category, please send it, along with an authoritative source, to me at: licaribe@sunsite.unc.edu. If you do send me something, please let me know if you'd like your contribution to be recognized with a "suggested by:" credit line.