Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2012-12-06 Dec 6, 2012If those persons, who fancy themselves gifted with both the power and the right to define and punish other men’s vices, would but turn their thoughts inwardly, they would probably find that they have a great work to do at home; and that, when that shall have been completed, they will be little disposed to do more towards correcting the vices of others, than simply to give to others the results of their experience and observation.~ Lysander SpoonerSo long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience tells them it is wrong.~ Walter BagehotIt is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis Dec 5, 2012I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.~ Billie HolidayLaws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves.~ Thomas JeffersonThe jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.~ John Jay Dec 4, 2012Moderation in all things -- including moderation.~ Benjamin FranklinLaws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all legal professions of history have based their job security.~ Frank HerbertThat which we call sin in others is experiment for us.~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Dec 3, 2012Prohibition ended in 1933 because the nation’s most influential people, as well as the general public, acknowledged that it had failed. It had increased lawlessness and drinking and aggravated alcohol abuse.~ Thomas M. CoffeyProhibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime, It don't prohibit worth a dime, It's filled our land with vice and crime. Nevertheless, we're for it.~ Franklin P. AdamsIt is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.~ H. L. Mencken Nov 30, 2012The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be.~ Lao-TzuIf, then, it became so difficult, so nearly impossible, in most cases, to determine what is, and what is not, vice; and especially if it be so difficult, in nearly all cases, to determine where virtue ends, and vice begins; and if these questions, which no one can really and truly determine for anybody but himself, are not to be left free and open for experiment by all, each person is deprived of the highest of all his rights as a human being, to wit: his right to inquire, investigate, reason, try experiments, judge, and ascertain for himself, what is, to him,virtue, and what is, to him, vice; in other words: what, on the whole, conduces to his happiness, and what, on the whole, tends to his unhappiness. If this great right is not to be left free and open to all, then each man’s whole right, as a reasoning human being, to "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," is denied him. ~ Lysander SpoonerIf moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral.~ Samuel P. Ginder Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print