Remarks to David Lloyd George (4 September 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 245
1930s
“The danger is perhaps not great if the people of one State, through their legislature, decide that Lady Chatterley's Lover goes so far beyond the acceptable standards of candor that it will be deemed offensive and non-sellable, for the State next door is still free to make its own choice. At least we do not have one uniform standard. But the dangers to free thought and expression are truly great if the Federal Government imposes a blanket ban over the Nation on such a book. […] The fact that the people of one State cannot read some of the works of D. H. Lawrence seems to me, if not wise or desirable, at least acceptable. But that no person in the United States should be allowed to do so seems to me to be intolerable, and violative of both the letter and spirit of the First Amendment.”
Concurring in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 496 (1957) (striking down a federal censorship act as unconstitutional).
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John Marshall Harlan II 9
American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (… 1899–1971Related quotes
The Aggressive Will. p. 167.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)
"O.C. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher trying again with bill protecting state marijuana laws", The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rohrabacher-659189-laws-state.html (April 23, 2015)
“In Lady Chatterley’s Lover we meet the ancient honest word fuck.”
Lawrence believed that it could be cleansed of its centuries of accumulated filth and stalk nakedly through his pages like Connie and Mellors themselves, standing for an act of love which had been too long swaddled in euphemisms. There are many people who cherish the fallacy of a golden age of Anglo-Saxon candour in which lovers invited each other to fuck or be fucked….This was never so. The word has always been taboo. You will find no Anglo-Saxon document which contains it. True, it is old, cognate with the German ficken, but it stands for a brutal act unsuitable for the marriage bed. It connotes impersonality and aggression. When Dr Johnson said that drinking and fucking were the only things worth doing…he was referring to getting drunk and going to brothels. A man can fuck a whore but, unless his wife is a whore, he cannot fuck his wife….fuck is a…dysphemism….there is no love in it. Lawrence made an aesthetic rather than a moral gaffe….
Non-Fiction, Flame Into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence (1985)
“The Importance of Cultural Freedom,” p. 20.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)
“All peoples have the right to decide their own fate with a free expression of will.”
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, International Tensions And New Principles
Context: All peoples have the right to decide their own fate with a free expression of will. This right is guaranteed by international control over observance by all governments of the "Declaration of the Rights of Man." International control presupposes the use of economic sanctions as well as the use of military forces of the United Nations in defense of "the rights of man."
Madison's notes (31 May 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_531.asp
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
Context: Mr. MADISON considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government. He observed that in some of the States one branch of the Legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors. That if the first branch of the general legislature should be elected by the State Legislatures, the second branch elected by the first-the Executive by the second together with the first; and other appointments again made for subordinate purposes by the Executive, the people would be lost sight of altogether; and the necessary sympathy between them and their rulers and officers, too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy of refining the popular appointments by successive filtrations, but though it might be pushed too far. He wished the expedient to be resorted to only in the appointment of the second branch of the Legislature, and in the Executive & judiciary branches of the Government. He thought too that the great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable, if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves, than if it should stand merely on the pillars of the Legislatures.
Source: "What I Believe" (1930), p. 16
1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)