Legislated Quotes & Sayings

We can never stop searching for Heaven, since there is always more of it than we can see. There, as in those tales that evolve endlessly into other tales, stories have no end. They are hardly ever the stories you know, the official ones, in which wishes are made formal, then legislated and enforced as matters of life or death. They are more often the stories we didn't hear, or wouldn't believe, told by the person we ignored, the house that was razed, the choir of dry bones. The scholars of Heaven read and study the vast collection of ashes, books from the torched libraries. — Patricia Storace

People must be changed ... goodness cannot be legislated. — Spencer W. Kimball

Language is not a protocol legislated by an authority but rather a wiki that pools the contributions of millions of writers and speakers, who ceaselessly bend the language to their needs and who inexorably age, die, and get replaced by their children, who adapt the language in their turn. — Steven Pinker

I believe that what is legislated bleeds down into everything. So if the legislation continues to uphold anything that doesn't support equal rights and civil rights, that bleeds down into Matthew Shepard being murdered. — Pauley Perrette

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election. — Edward Rutherfurd

Past presidents entered the room. "Republicans and Democrats getting along?" Jake asked. "Daddy always said the two parties were meant to keep Americans divided while big changes were legislated under the smokescreen of political infighting. — J. Nell Brown

As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience. — Agnes Repplier

Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place. — Robert A. Heinlein

The social issues outside of football are not as defined as they were earlier, when integration took place and certain rights were legislated. The Civil Rights movement is over. Individuals can buy homes wherever they want, travel first class wherever they want, eat wherever they want. — Jim Brown

The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth . — Russell Kirk

There are always those who say legislation can't solve the problem. There is a half-truth involved here. It is true that legislation cannot solve the whole problem. It can solve some of the problem. It may be true that morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Cannot be imposed, legislated, or decreed. They can only be cultivated, and — Jon Kabat-Zinn

I do not find that I feel myself to be any different as an English subject than as an American. I have not the vote in either place, so I am not a citizen of either, and have no call to be patriotic. In fact, I do not see how women can ever feel like anything but aliens in whatever country they may live, for they have no part or lot in any, except the part and lot of being taxed and legislated for by men. — Hannah Whitall Smith

I was in the state Senate in Wyoming, and we actually legislated. We offered amendments on bills and voted on things. — John Barrasso

(in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while shutting DMV offices in areas where Democratic constituencies live and lengthening their hours of operation in GOP-dominated ones); — Anonymous

My major goal in business was to learn. I had legislated in my mind for failure the worse possible scenario was I would learn a lot regardless of the outcome. This goal was the foundation for success of the business. Peldi, Balsamiq — Kevin Kelly DO The Pursuit Of Xceptional Execution

But we know that freedom cannot be served by the devices of the tyrant. As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence. And any who act as if freedoms defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

How do I make more than a fumbling attempt to explain that faith is not legislated, that it is not a small box which works twenty-four hours a day? If I 'believe' for two minutes once every month or so, I'm doing well. — Madeleine L'Engle

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Today it is becoming harder to speak out, with the inception of the Patriot Act, the president has legislated free speech to be a crime. — Frank Serpico

Our increasingly humanistic laws, courts and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us, as they strike down laws resting upon biblical foundations, that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality, but salvation by law. — Rousas John Rushdoony

How an individual's reputation is protected online is too important and subtle a policy matter to be legislated by a high court, which is institutionally mismatched to the evolving intricacies of the online world. — Jonathan Zittrain

Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always legislated some form of realism. — Russell Smith

The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things. — Ben Okri

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. — Paul Krugman

True law is not imposed; it arises from unintentional developments. ( ... )Law emerges ( ... ) as something not merely legislated but given. The later positivism knows no origin and has no home. It recognizes only causes or basic norms. It seeks to be the opposite of "unintended" law. Its ultimate goal is control and calculability. — Carl Schmitt

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.

But 'fairness' is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed--the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. — David Mamet

Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government. — Joe Wurzelbacher

Most importantly, what you get from a greasy spoon is a certain kind of smell that has been almost legislated out of existence. It is cigaretty, certainly, and it also has the catch-throat quality of smoking fat. It is a warm, companionable fug that rises to meet you as you step through the door on a late autumn day and it is how public places used to smell in my childhood in the 1970s. It is real, it is human, and it beats anything I know. — Kathryn Hughes

The division of members into Tories or Whigs had by 1761 lost nearly all significance; the real division was between supporters and opponents of the current "government," or ministry, or of the king. By and large the Tories protected the landed interest; the Whigs were willing now and then to consider the desires of the business class; otherwise both Tories and Whigs were equally conservative. Neither party legislated for the benefit of the masses. — Will Durant

At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right - or should I say entitlement? They raised such a big political fuss that Congress legislated nontaxable status for employer-provided medical care. — Milton Friedman