Good Legislation Quotes & Sayings

Many European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand, have adopted legislation that creates a 'public lending right', where the government recognises that enabling hundreds of people to read a single copy of a book provides a public good, but that doing so is likely to reduce sales of the book. — Peter Singer

Legislation since this period has followed the course, I pointed out. Rapidly multiplying dictatorial measures have continually tended to restrict individual liberties, and this in two ways. Regulations have been established every year in greater number, imposing a constraint on the citizen in matters in which his acts were formerly completely free, and forcing him to accomplish acts which he was formerly at liberty to accomplish or not to accomplish at will. At the same time heavier and heavier public, and especially local, burdens have still further restricted his liberty by diminishing the portion of his profits he can spend as he chooses, and by augmenting the portion which is taken from him to be spent according to the good pleasure of the public authorities. — Gustave Le Bon

I cannot in good conscience vote for final passage of legislation that would pave the way to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. — Jim Ramstad

I voted against the climate-change legislation. Not that I don't believe we should move to a clean-energy economy, and it can be good for South Dakota's economy to do so, but it was started out as a very partisan bill in the committee. — Stephanie Herseth

You can support trans-positive legislation, tranny artists, and the inclusion of trannies in your neighborhood, schools, place of worship, whatever. For the long term? Join or initiate some good legal battles against the puritanical laws that exist around sex and gender. — Kate Bornstein

A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the "Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act," was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby's shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week. Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend - but is it really necessary to put the word "killing" in the title of a major piece of legislation? — Chellie Pingree

What I have come to realize over the twenty years when I have worked in different roles as a legislator is that no legislation is as good as the enforcement of it. — Margrethe Vestager

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin. — Charles Krauthammer

And to bring people together we need a simple and straightforward progressive agenda which speaks to the needs of our people, and which provides us with a vision of a very different America. And what is that agenda? Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. It begins with jobs. If we are truly serious about reversing the decline of the middle class we need a major federal jobs program which puts millions of Americans back to work at decent-paying jobs. At a time when our roads, bridges, water systems, rail, and airports are decaying, the most effective way to rapidly create meaningful jobs is to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. That's why I've introduced legislation which would invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our country's physical infrastructure. This legislation would create and maintain at least thirteen million good-paying jobs, while making our country more productive, efficient, and safe. And I promise you, as president I will lead that legislation into law. Trade. — Bernie Sanders

[Obama] was highly praised, including by his supporters, for his statesmanlike attitude during the lame-duck session, bipartisanship, and getting legislation through. What did he get through? The main achievement was a huge tax cut for the extremely wealthy ... Meanwhile, at the same time, he initiated a tax increase on federal workers. Of course, no one called it a tax increase. That doesn't sound good. They called it a pay freeze. But a pay freeze on public-sector workers is exactly the same thing as a tax increase. So we punish public-sector workers and reward the executives of Goldman Sachs, who just announced a $17.5 billion compensation package for themselves. — Noam Chomsky

I want to compliment the fraternity and sorority organizations for taking the time to meet with us and then removing their support from the legislation that would have been so counterproductive for a goal that I think we all share - and that is making campuses safer and the successful prosecution of people who commit serious crimes. So, good on them that they backed off, and we don't have to fight them. — Claire McCaskill

Michael also hadn't realized just how extensive Gregory's power was, he had his fingers in everything: from oil production to technology to government legislation to dealing with rogue states and terrorists to control over stock markets and currencies. If Gregory had wanted to, he could've brought the world to its knees in less than a day, but that wouldn't do anyone any good if the world economy and various governments failed in an instant, it had to do be done gradually. Michael also realized how long it would take to dilute the influence of the United States and its Christian citizens, but he would do it, and it helped him that he started so early in college with the new technologies available to him. — Cliff Ball

Cross the wrong state border with your gun, or wake up one morning to new legislation or a new presidential executive order, and suddenly you're the bad guy, not the good guy. No wonder some gun owners seem so touchy; they feel, at some level, like criminals in waiting. — Walter Kirn

I did sit down with Jared Polis (D-CO), and we had a good discussion about having the LGBT [Equality] Caucus pool some money and perhaps hire a staffer like some of the other caucuses do. That way we could hopefully be even more proactive on issues like ENDA, student non-discrimination and some of the other bills that are out thereit's just a matter of now figuring out - having seven of us total - how can we best move those forward either through legislation and working with the president to issue orders. — Mark Pocan

I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well. — Rand Paul

I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation ... I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades. — Ron Paul

Educational legislation nowadays is largely in the hands of illiterate people, and the illiterate will take good care that their illiteracy is not made a reproach on them. — Katharine Elizabeth Fullerton Gerould

If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That's why legislation and regulations are necessary. — Russell Simmons

Well, I think the best thing we can do for the short term is move good energy legislation through to the Congress; I'm encouraged that there's some prospect for that now. — John W. Snow

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, 'Huh. It works. It makes sense. — Barack Obama

Speaker Newt Gingrich has appointed a task force, which I'm on, and over the next couple months the task force is going to try to come up with legislation that does what we're all trying to do. I feel pretty good about the members that are on the task force. — Charlie Norwood

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones. — Voltaire

This battle for 'common-sense' gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, 'gun control' legislation. Good news - if you're a crook. — Larry Elder

There are a lot of great animal rights organizations who save dogs and save cats, but the Humane Society is actually really good at working with Congress and getting legislation actually passed. — Moby

No one can disagree with the objectives of the legislation that culminated in the 1962 amendments. Of course it is desirable that the public be protected from unsafe and useless drugs. However, it is also desirable that new drug development should be stimulated, and that new drugs should be made available to those who can benefit from them as soon as possible. As is so often the case, one good objective conflicts with other good objectives. Safety and caution in one direction can mean death in another. — Milton Friedman

I believe that the many administration officials, lawmakers, and regulatory policymakers - and their staffs - who poured a year and a half of prodigious work into the legislation had been guided, knowingly or not, by a simultaneously high-minded and pragmatic sentiment that Woodrow Wilson voiced before he launched the effort that would establish the Federal Reserve System. "We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be," Wilson said in his first inaugural address. Wilson's words continued to make good sense a century later. — Ben S. Bernanke

Hunting because of the 2004 Hunting Act. This is not a good advertisement for legislation. Yet, to appreciate the full force of the sham, recall, in wonder, the great ruptures between town and country, left and right, liberals and animal-welfare nuts, that preceded the ban. The march of 400,000 wax-jacketed pro-hunt protesters through London, the 700 hours of parliamentary debates devoted to the issue, the threat from Labour backbenchers to oppose all government business unless the ban was brought - it was madness. Even at the time, it seemed so: a dilettantish, illiberal, class-infused blot on what was otherwise a British golden age, for politics and the economy - as even the ban's reluctant main architect, Tony Blair, later admitted. A man not given to regrets, the then prime minister considered the ban one of his biggest. "God only knows," he reflected, what the point of it was. — Anonymous

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad. — Denis Diderot

As a governor, I've signed virtually every kind of pro-life legislation that we can sign under existing federal law, none of which have been harsh or punitive, but I think they've been important to really point out a pro-life culture in Arkansas. That's, for me, a good thing. — Mike Huckabee

The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good. — Charles Caleb Colton

It's a slow process, but it is scary, because if someone can control your energy sources, they can control you. We are already being told what light bulbs we can and cannot use ... through legislation. We are being forced to fund research into alternative energies sources that are inefficient, and that cause the price of food, energy, and everything else to rise ... through legislation ... rather than allow free enterprise to allocate funds to those energy sources that will survive through good old American innovation! — Mike Thompson

It is a considerable point in all good legislation to determine exactly the credibility of witnesses and the proofs of a crime. Every reasonable man, everyone, that is, whose ideas have a certain interconnection and whose feelings accord with those of other men, may be a witness. The true measure of his credibility is nothing other than his interest in telling or not telling the truth; for this reason it is frivolous to insist that women are too weak [to be good witnesses], childish to insist that civil death in a condemned man has the same effects as a real death, and meaningless to insist on the infamy of the infamous, when they have no interest in lying. — Cesare Beccaria

Since I joined Congress, I've been shocked at how many times we were forced to vote on 1,000-plus-page bills without ample time to read or review what was in the final legislation. It's no wonder Congress doesn't enact good policy. — Erik Paulsen

The Buddhist tenet, "Non-killing is supreme virtue", is very good, but in trying to enforce it upon all by legislation without paying any heed to the capacities of the people at large, Buddhism has brought ruin upon India. — Swami Vivekananda

Some leaders may be honest and good but unwise in legislation they choose to support. Others may possess wisdom but be dishonest and unvirtuous. We must be concerted in our desires and efforts to see men and women represent us who possess all three of these qualities. — Ezra Taft Benson

The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen. — Susette La Flesche

the causes of poverty as put forth in the Bible are remarkably balanced. The Bible gives us a matrix of causes. One factor is oppression, which includes a judicial system weighted in favor of the powerful (Leviticus 19:15), or loans with excessive interest (Exodus 22:25-27), or unjustly low wages (Jeremiah 22:13; James 5:1-6). Ultimately, however, the prophets blame the rich when extremes of wealth and poverty in society appear (Amos 5:11-12; Ezekiel 22:29; Micah 2:2; Isaiah 5:8). As we have seen, a great deal of the Mosaic legislation was designed to keep the ordinary disparities between the wealthy and the poor from becoming aggravated and extreme. Therefore, whenever great disparities arose, the prophets assumed that to some degree it was the result of selfish individualism rather than concern with the common good. — Timothy J. Keller