Legalized Quotes & Sayings

And somewhere
out there,
in the river of
addicts,
alcoholics,
wife beaters,
doormats,
overeducated legalized thieves,
fascist police,
and bitter rivalries
someone told me
it's a good city,
and I don't know
what's more frightening — Phil Volatile

The growing policy-reform movement is a broad church. It includes everyone from ganja-smoking Rastafarians to free-market fundamentalists and all in between. There are socialists who think the drug war hurts the poor, capitalists who see a business opportunity, liberals who defend the right to choose, and fiscal conservatives who complain America is spending $40 billion a year on the War on Drugs rather than making a few billion taxing it. The movement can't agree on much other than that the present policy doesn't work. People disagree on whether legalized drugs should be controlled by the state, by corporations, by small businessmen, or by grow-your-own farmers, and on whether they should be advertised, taxed, or just handed out free in white boxes to addicts. — Ioan Grillo

When the surgeon general [Joycelyn Elders] said that drugs should be legalized, I saw somebody else who felt what I feel. But she got fired. — Snoop Dogg

We've legalized marijuana recently. Medical marijuana, but the rest will come. — Susan Sarandon

The culmination of a long struggle was 2013, which could clearly be labeled the Year of the Gay. State after state had legalized gay marriage, despite intense opposition from the religious right. — Edmund White

Pot must be legalized as it grows in nature. It is natural and organic too. It is part of the hemp world and it is criminal that we do not use hemp to facilitate our lifestyle. From paper to soap to clothes to anything, we can think of for the most part. — Steven Machat

When I turn on my radio, when I hear that Negroes have been lynched in America, I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead; when I turn on my radio, when I hear that Jews have been insulted, mistreated, persecuted, I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead; when, finally, I turn on my radio and hear that in Africa forced labor has been inaugurated and legalized, I say that we have certainly been lied to: Hitler is not dead. — Aime Cesaire

Mayor de Blasio has legalized ferrets. Now you can legally own ferrets in New York City. I want to tell you something. If I want to see anymore beady-eyed little weasels, I'll just keep riding the subway. — David Letterman

Interracial marriages were basically legalized, but nevertheless, there was a social stigma attached to them for a long time to come. I imagine that's going to be true for same-sex marriages - that people's emotional comfort level with it will not fully materialize for decades. — Mark Takano

Ty crawled over him again, pressing him to the mattress and kissing him until they were both breathless. "I'll make sure of it tonight. Now get your ass in gear, let's go get legalized. — Abigail Roux

Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft. — Walter E. Williams

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Market conservatives" who disdain cultural issues are little different from liberals in their belief that the marketplace (or in the liberals' case, the marketplace of ideas) will somehow produce virtuous, self-governing citizens. Let's call these folks "liberaltarians."

What the liberaltarians, who clamor for drug legalization, free sex, abortion, legalized prostitution, and limitless pornography above all else do not understand is that the sexual revolution that they mistake for freedom is the most serious threat poed to liberty in America. — Robert H. Knight

At this point I feel I would be remiss to not mention the prevalence of a specific kind of person who enters the field of book publishing. This is the English lit major who never should have left academia, a genius who has read all of V.S. Naipaul but can't photocopy title pages right side up. This person is very thin, possibly vegan, probably Ivy League. He or she feels as if answering the phone in a chipper voice is a form of legalized prostitution. He or she has a single quirky fashion piece, usually red or black, and waxes poetic about typewriters and the British, having never truly known either. Regardless of sex, they all want to be David Foster Wallace when they grow up. — Sloane Crosley

Legalized abortion is a national holocaust; an affront to our national character; a contradiction of established principles subscribed to from the beginning of Western Civilization; an insult to the principles of our Declaration of Independence; a bane of our national spirit; and a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God. — Chuck Baldwin

In the face of legalized pornography, the conscience of America seems to be paralyzed. More serious than our fakery in art, literature, and pictures is the collapse of our moral standards and the blunting of our capacity as a nation for righteous indignation. — Billy Graham

Most wives fuck their husbands, just to ensure financial support. Marriage is just a form of legalized prostitution, when you really thought about it. — K. Syrah

Look, nearly everything in the culture says we're freaks. Doing sex work, we're desired; we can get rewarded for being what we've always wanted to be. What's so bad about that? My own notion is I wish sex work would be decriminalized (not legalized, please note the distinction) so that more trannies could get into the field if they wanted to and not get into trouble for it. — Kate Bornstein

Major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. — Michelle Alexander

I'd rather be in Las Vegas 104 degrees than New York 90 degrees, you know why? Legalized prostitution. In any weather that takes the edge off. — Ray Romano

Through the dark days of legalized segregation and on into the civil rights era, jazz shone as a beacon for achieving interracial respect and understanding. It seemed as if the dream of a color-blind society was within reach in the jazz world, where musicians were judged on merit and not skin color. — Randy Sandke

Everyone knows that our current system is kind of like legalized prostitution. The corporate sector completely controls the civic sector. — Peter Coyote

If the truth about loving or hateful choices were revealed it would break open the earth's crust. Which is why we live in legalized and general delusion. Fiction takes the place of reality. This is why simply naming one of these turns of the unconscious that are part of our strange human adventure engenders such upsets (which are at once intimate, individual, and political); why consciously or unconsciously we constantly try to save ourselves from this naming. — Helene Cixous

Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally. — Jeb Bush

What makes me a libertarian is that the prospect of having that
reconfiguration done by the same system that managed to ban marijuana
while allowing tobacco, subsidize ethanol made from corn, and turn the
patent system into a form of legalized bludgeoning, makes me want to run
screaming into the night until I fall over from lack of oxygen. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

Remember: sin, even if legalized by man, is still sin in the eyes of God. — Russell M. Nelson

After 'Roe v. Wade' - when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 - I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not. — Karen DeCrow

The wedding took place in Vermont, where they have legalized gay civil unions, and I married a woman. — Craig Ferguson

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, however, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime. In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years - the years during which young men enter their criminal prime - the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime. — Steven D. Levitt

Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won't be for our benefit but for the authorities. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it. — Germaine Greer

I think pot should be legalized, but I think the promotion of party culture is irresponsible. — Krist Novoselic

Making prostitution legalized gives our society a message that sex is not sacred/private between two adults - that sex can be bought and sold just like any object. But prostitutes are people, not objects to be consumed, used and discarded like trash when they are no longer doing what each client/trafficker wants. — Annie Lobert

You ever think that school dances are a form of legalized prostitution? — Alex Flinn

Well, that's marriage these days. Legalized hate. — Philip K. Dick

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. — Calvin Coolidge

This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi. — Amiri Baraka

Evil working in subtler fashion; marriages that proved to be no more then legalized slavery, and the careful manipulation of a bright and sensitive mind until its owner truly believed with all her heart in her own worthlessness. Betrayal, not once, but many times over. — Mercedes Lackey

Libertarians: Never got over the fact they weren't the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it. Unusually smug for a political philosophy that's never gotten anyone elected for anything above the local water board. All for legalized drugs and prostitution but probably wouldn't want their kids blowing strangers for crack; all for slashing taxes for nearly every social service but don't seem to understand why most people aren't at all keen to trade in even the minimal safety net the US provides for 55-gallon barrels of beans and rice, a crossbow and a first-aid kit in the basement. Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn't actually involve real live humans. Libertarians — John Scalzi

If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized. — Lysander Spooner

There are many examples of this mistaken idea of freedom, such as the elimination of human life by legalized or generally accepted abortion. — Pope John Paul II

I am not anarchist. I have nothing against government or law enforcement in general. It is solely for the reason that this govt has legalized the murder of children that I have no allegiance to nor do I recognize the legitimacy of this particular government in Washington. — Eric Rudolph

That's one reason why a civil war is worse than any other sort. When two parties in a given country resort to arms to settle political differences, every man is a potential enemy to every other man, and the distinction between legalized killing and murder is not clearly drawn in the minds of average men, who are incapable of sustained thought. Death is held to be a fitting reward for those who dare hold contrary views, and a nation involved in a civil war is a breeding ground for children reared to look with tolerance on next to nothing but violence. — Kenneth Roberts

It is impossible! It has never happened - it cannot happen in the very nature of things. Marriage is something against nature. Marriage is an imposition, an invention of man - certainly out of necessity, but now even that necessity is out of date. It was a necessary evil in the past, but now it can be dropped. And it should be dropped: man has suffered enough for it, more than enough. It is an ugly institution for the simple reason that love cannot be legalized. Love and law are contradictory phenomena. — Rajneesh

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. — Thomas Jefferson

To cover the fact that a central bank is merely a cartel which has been legalized, its proponents had to lay down a thick smoke screen of technical jargon focusing always on how it would supposedly benefit commerce, the public, and the nation ... there was not the slightest glimmer that underneath it all, was a master plan which was designed from top to bottom to serve private interests at the expense of the public ... the system is merely a cartel with a government facade. — G. Edward Griffin

Right now, nobody legalized paper money. Where did that come from. — Ron Paul

Being alone onstage is like legalized insanity. — Robin Williams

Even Republicans seem to think that these undocumented Democrats could be made [GOP] voters ... and what happens is that two out every three that would be legalized [and] become Democrats. And it's not 12 million. It's more like 20 million ... But it isn't just the equation of 2/3 of over 20 million that will vote for the guy who opposes our conservative candidate whoever that might be, but it's also those who will leave us if we fail them ... We have to go back and tie together and restore the pillars of American exceptionalism and the rule of law is essential. — Steve King

Gay marriage should be legalized in america because gay men are the only men who want to be married. — Chuck Klosterman

Truly we have had enough experience with sufferance and protection which could be revoked at will. Consequently, the only reasonable Course of action is to work for publicly legalized guarantees. — Theodor Herzl

The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. — Calvin Coolidge

From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership? — W.E.B. Du Bois

I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder. — Harry Patch

Lost in much of the national debate about immigration reform is how Democrats ultimately stand to gain electorally with any legislation or executive action that would put the newly legalized residents on a path to voting. — Aaron Klein

Ronald Reagan basically legalized every illegal immigrant in this country. I just like to bring this up because every week I like to make Republican heads explode about how they love Ronald Reagan, but would despise everything he did. — Bill Maher

Legalized drugs would cause dislocations in the US economy - the prison industry for example and tens of billions spent annually on drug enforcement. But because the US economy is so large, this would be a minor blow, hardly as severe as the ultimate nightmare for the US economy, global peace, which would shutter its death industry commonly called the military/industrial complex. — Charles Bowden

If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously. — Ken Kesey

Even if gay marriage were legalized there would still be gay men who didn't want to marry, gay men no other gay men would want to marry, and gay men who didn't want to leave the priesthood in order to marry. — Dan Savage

The legalized liquor business is the tragedy of our civilization. Alcohol is the greatest and most blighting curse of our modern civilization. The liquor seller is simply and only a privileged malefactor - a criminal. — Abraham Lincoln

Their idea is that marriage is for legalized prostitution. They think like that, — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Diverting resources into uneconomic uses takes them away from other, more productive areas and costs jobs. Some jobs are lost; others are never created. The uneconomic effects of protectionism benefit a few - usually well-to-do - at the expense of the great majority, including the poor. Protectionism cannot be justified on economic or moral grounds. As Frederic Bastiat wrote, tariffs are "legalized plunder." The law is used to steal. By — Ludwig Von Mises

As one whose husband and mother-in-law have died the victims of murder and assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by a legalized murder. — Coretta Scott King

The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer
please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you
an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. — Anne Lamott

The Federal Reserve System is nothing more than legalized counterfeit. — Ron Paul

Would the world be a better place if all drugs were legalized tomorrow? Absolutely. But pragmatically speaking, you're not going to go from the criminalization of all drugs to the legalization of drugs overnight. — Gary Johnson

In all cases of monstrosity at birth anaesthetics should be applied by doctors publicly appointed for that purpose ... Every successive year would see fewer of the unfit born, and finally none. But, it may be urged, this is legalized infanticide. Assuredly it is; and it is urgently needed. — Tennessee Celeste Claflin

When the church first began, it was a pacifistic movement known for its outspoken criticism of any form of bloodshed or violence. After Constantine legalized Christianity, 'just war' theory emerged, which meant that Christians could participate in wars if certain criteria were satisfied. By the year 1100, Christians were launching Crusades and telling the faithful that killing Muslims would secure them a spot in heaven! What happened? Somewhere along the way we forgot that Jesus intended the Sermon on the Mount to be an actual, concrete program for living. He wanted us to actually live it, not just admire it as a nice but unrealistic ideal. I mean, what would happen if Christians dedicated themselves to peacemaking with the same discipline and focus that armies do for war? What difference could it make? We have to revisit the early church's teachings about reconciliation, peacemaking, and the Sermon on the Mount and ask ourselves if we're living them out or tiptoeing around them. — Ian Morgan Cron

Similarly, consider the relationship between how society handles cigarettes and marijuana. Most medical professionals agree that smoking cigarettes is more damaging to one's health overall than smoking marijuana. Despite its intensely addictive qualities, however, the consumption of tobacco has been legalized in this country, while marijuana is considered a "drug" and is banned. — Dave Pounder

As long as they are working, they should be legalized. I admire so much each and every migrant. They are the most loyal workers in the U.S. economy. They build the homes of those who are attacking them. — Vicente Fox

For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds - and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert. Those people would be legalized with the same act. — Steve King

We told you this would happen, if gay marriage is legalized, then much chaos would follow. — Bill O'Reilly

The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government. — Thomas DiLorenzo

I don't think that there would be more users if drugs were legalized. — Roman Polanski

Oh I don't plan on getting married. It's a legalized form of prostitution. — Candace Bushnell

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. — Ron Paul

It is no coincidence that as the Supreme Court has been removing the last constraints on the legalized corruption of politicians, the American standard of living has been falling at the fastest rate in decades. — Mike Lofgren

I grew up in the South. I grew up in the days of legalized segregation. And, so, whether you called it legal racial segregation or you called it apartheid, it was the same injustice. — Johnnetta B. Cole

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop - and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high. — Charles Stross

In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use illicit drugs because they are illicit. They are thumbing their noses at society. If they were legal, they might not. — Noam Chomsky

We've come to a basic agreement, which is that first, people will be legalized. In other words, not citizens, but they'll be allowed to work, come out of the shadows, travel. Then, we will make sure the border is secure. And we have specific metrics that are in the bill. I'm not going to get into what they are ... — Charles Schumer

If drugs were legalized in the US, the Mexican economy would collapse since the earnings from drugs bring in more hard currency than its largest licit source, oil sales. Mexico is a corrupt state that has now become dependent on the earnings on an illegal product. But inevitably, the product will become legal and then Mexico will retain its corruption but must face the needs of its citizens now employed by the drug industry who have become steeped in violence and conditioned to higher incomes. — Charles Bowden

Government is a kind of legalized pillage. — Elbert Hubbard

Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the 'tolerance trap' so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God's law of chastity. — Boyd K. Packer

I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication. — Patricia Highsmith

There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you." — Walter E. Williams

I believe that the levels of taxation advocated by liberals render those taxes a veiled form of theft. 'Give me more than half of your honestly earned money or you will be arrested' is legalized thievery. — Dennis Prager

Advertising is legalized lying. — H.G.Wells

Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction. — Lysander Spooner

They legalized alcohol, they legalized tobacco. What is it gonna hurt to legalize this medicinal, medical marijuana that's used for purposes of cataracts? — Snoop Dogg

Vegas is everything that's right with America. You can do whatever you want, 24 hours a day. They've effectively legalized everything there. — Drew Carey

Where do people get off telling people what to do? It's their bodies. If you legalized sex work and legally protected the sex workers, you wouldn't see anything like human trafficking. All of that would be obliterated. — Margaret Cho

I was a heavy drinker, but the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. I smoke grass now. I say that to everybody, because marijuana should be legalized. It's ridiculous that it isn't. If at the end of the day I feel like smoking a joint I do it. It changes the perception of what I've been through all day. — Robert Altman

I think that marijuana should be legalized. I think the only reason it isn't legal is because politicians who smoked it when they were young men or young women just don't have the courage when they become politicians to legalize it. — Richard Branson

Even somebody like Bill Clinton, who I happen to admire very much, the second he was out of office, I remember, he was interview in Rolling Stone and he said he thought we should have legalized marijuana. And I thought, gosh, if only you were in some sort of position to affect change in the last eight years where you could have done something about that. — Bill Maher

We have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason. — Benjamin Disraeli

It is easier to seize wealth than to produce it, and as long as the State makes the seizure of wealth a matter of legalized privilege, so long will the squabble for that privilege go on. — Albert Jay Nock

The government has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana that you can use in FDA-approved research. So even though there are 20 states and the District of Columbia [that have legalized medical marijuana], and there's marijuana everywhere, we've spent seven years trying to get 10 grams of marijuana for vaporizer research. We're the only people in America that can't get 10 grams of marijuana. — Rick Doblin

When you get right down to it, militaries are essentially legalized mafias. — Michel Templet

When the President signs this act, the invisible government by the money power will be legalized. — Charles Lindbergh