Quotes about legislator
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Karl Dönitz photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Gustave de Molinari photo

“There are two ways of considering society. According to some, the development of human associations is not subject to providential, unchangeable laws. Rather, these associations, having originally been organized in a purely artificial manner by primeval legislators, can later be modified or remade by other legislators, in step with the progress of social science.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

In this system the government plays a preeminent role, because it is upon it, the custodian of the principle of authority, that the daily task of modifying and remaking society devolves.<p>According to others, on the contrary, society is a purely natural fact. Like the earth on which it stands, society moves in accordance with general, preexisting laws. In this system, there is no such thing, strictly speaking, as social science; there is only economic science, which studies the natural organism of society and shows how this organism functions.
Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 15-16

John Marshall Harlan photo

“If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race.”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow-citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done.
1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Francis Escudero photo
Jerry Brown photo

“Jerry is perceived by most legislators as very selfish.”

Jerry Brown (1938) American politician/lawyer and current governor of California

Leo McCarthy, former Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the California State Assembly, United Press International, unspecified article, unspecified date, 1978.

Josefa Iloilo photo

“I welcome the democratic process allowing all sections of society to express their views on the proposed legislation. The debate taking place is, in itself, helping the nation to understand that reconciliation is a difficult but necessary process.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

on the government's controversial plans to set up a Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the political upheaval of 2000
Speech opening Parliament, 1 August 2005 (excerpts)

Ulysses S. Grant photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Education does have a great role to play in this period of transition. But it is not either education or legislation; it is both education and legislation. It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important also. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often so and we have to do in society through legislation. We must depend on religion and education to change bad internal attitudes, but we need legislation to control the external effects of those bad internal attitudes. And so there is a need for meaningful civil right legislation.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Address at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa (15 October 1962) https://news.cornellcollege.edu/dr-martin-luther-kings-visit-to-cornell-college/; also quoted in Wall Street Journal (13 November 1962), Notable & Quotable , p. 18
Variant:
It is true that behavior cannot be legislated, and legislation cannot make you love me, but legislation can restrain you from lynching me, and I think that is kind of important.
Address at Finney Chapel, Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008)
1960s

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Cesar Chavez photo

“We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. For too many years we have been treated like the lowest of the low. Our wages and working conditions have been determined from above, because irresponsible legislators who could have helped us, have supported the rancher's argument that the plight of the Farm Worker was a "special case."”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

They saw the obvious effects of an unjust system, starvation wages, contractors, day hauls, forced migration, sickness, illiteracy, camps and sub-human living conditions, and acted as if they were irremediable causes. The farm worker has been abandoned to his own fate — without representation, without power — subject to mercy and caprice of the rancher. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference. To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. From this movement shall spring leaders who shall understand us, lead us, be faithful to us, and we shall elect them to represent us. We shall be heard.
The Plan of Delano (1965)

Jacinda Ardern photo
Jacinda Ardern photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Lai Pin-yu photo

“I’ve told myself over and over during this (Republic of China 2020 legislative) election that: "You can't pretend to be someone else."”

Lai Pin-yu (1992) Taiwanese social activist

I hope that voters can see my regular self, and that the Lai Pin-yu during election campaigning is the same as the regular Lai Pin-yu.

Lai Pin-yu (2020) cited in " From the Sunflower Movement to the DPP: An Interview with Lai Pin-yu https://newbloommag.net/2020/01/03/lai-pin-yu-interview/" on New Bloom, 11 January 2020.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo

“Some think that we are approaching a critical moment in the history of Liberalism. ... We hear of a divergence of old Liberalism and new. ... The terrible new school, we hear, are for beginning operations by dethroning Gladstonian finance. They are for laying hands on the sacred ark. But did any one suppose that the fiscal structure which was reared in 1853 was to last for ever, incapable of improvement, and guaranteed to need no repair? ... Another heresy is imputed to this new school which fixes a deep gulf between the wicked new Liberals and the virtuous old. We are adjured to try freedom first before we try interference of the State. That is a captivating formula, but it puzzles me to find that the eminent statesman who urges us to lay this lesson to heart is strongly in favour of maintaining the control of the State over the Church? But is State interference an innovation? I thought that for 30 years past Liberals had been as much in favour as other people of this protective legislation. ... [O]ther countries have tried freedom and it is just because we have decided that freedom in such a case is only a fine name for neglect, and have tried State supervision, that we have saved our industrial population from the waste, destruction, destitution, and degradation that would otherwise have overtaken them. ... In short, gentlemen, I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Annual presidential address to the Junior Liberal Association of Glasgow (10 February 1885), quoted in 'Mr. John Morley At Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10
1880s

John F. Kennedy photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

George Mason photo
Michael Foot photo

“I am bitterly opposed to any form of legislation, particularly legislation introduced by a Labour Government, which involves an element of colour bar. It is an appalling thing to have happened. I want to see us returning as swiftly as possible to a situation where we wipe away this stain on the reputation of the Labour movement.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/nov/23/schedule-acts-continued-till-end-of#column_370 in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

Bonar Law photo
Jon Ossoff photo
Adin Ballou photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo

“The goal towards which the advance will probably be made at an accelerated pace, is that in the direction of which the legislation of the last quarter of a century has been tending—the intervention, in other words, of the State on behalf of the weak against the strong, in the interests of labour against capital, of want and suffering against luxury and wealth.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

‘The Revolution of 1884’, The Fortnightly Review, No. CCXVII, New Series (1 January 1885), quoted in T. H. S. Escott (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Vol. XXXVII, New Series (1 January – 1 June 1885), p. 9
1880s

“This year, I've had about half a dozen legislators tell me women really don't belong in the legislature, and they just can't vote for a bill with a woman's name on it.”

Beverly White (1928–2021) American politician

As quoted in The Daily Utah Chronicle https://archive.ph/ukNVj (December 5, 1979)

Luís Gama photo

“Slavery is a kind of social leprosy: it has often been abolished by legislators and restored by education under various aspects.”

Luís Gama (1830–1882) Brazilian lawyer, poet, abolitionist and journalist

1876. Source: Luiz Gama foi o 1º jornalista brasileiro negro, mas ainda é desconhecido https://jornaldebrasilia.com.br/noticias/brasil/luiz-gama-foi-o-1o-jornalista-brasileiro-negro-mas-ainda-e-desconhecido/.

Angela Davis photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo
Barbara Castle photo

“[W]e shall fight any legislation based on these proposals tooth and nail, line by line, and, however long it takes, we shall destroy the Bill.”

Barbara Castle (1910–2002) British politician

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1970/nov/26/industrial-relations#column_666 in the House of Commons against the Industrial Relations Bill (26 November 1970)

Jeff Landry photo

“We have a legislative branch that creates the law and the executive carries it out. When it works in that fashion, America works.”

Jeff Landry (1970) American politician, attorney and businessman

Source: Exclusive–Louisiana AG Jeff Landry: ‘The Democratic Party Would Like to Abolish the Constitution’ https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2018/04/05/exclusive-louisiana-ag-jeff-landry-the-democratic-party-would-like-to-abolish-the-constitution/ (5 April 2018)

Macky Sall photo

“I have an ambition to push at the level of the African Union, that we should have a harmonized legislation in the petroleum and also the mining sector so as to avoid ruinous competition with the aim of attracting investors.”

Macky Sall (1961) current President and former Prime Minister of Senegal

Source: Macky Sall (2021) cited in: " Senegal's President Calls on Africa to Harmonize Oil Legislation https://www.oedigital.com/news/492909-senegal-s-president-calls-on-africa-to-harmonize-oil-legislation" in Offshore Engineer, 16 December 2021.

Janice McGeachin photo

“I really look forward to being between the legislative branch of government and the executive branch of government — being a person that can facilitate a real strong, solid line of communication between the two bodies.”

Janice McGeachin (1963) American congresswoman in Idaho

Source: McGeachin talks plans going forward as Idaho’s new Lt. Governor https://www.eastidahonews.com/2018/11/mcgeachin-talks-plans-going-forward-as-idahos-new-lt-governor/ (November 12, 2018)

Alastair Reynolds photo
John Lee Ka-chiu photo

“No country will allow its legislative structure, parliament or congress to be filled up by treasonists, foreign agents or proxies of foreign forces. The Hong Kong electoral system must therefore be protected from exploitation and from foreign interference.”

John Lee Ka-chiu (1957) Chief Executive-elect of Hong Kong

"Speech by CS at online side event on Hong Kong-related issues during 49th session of United Nations Human Rights Council" https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202203/16/P2022031600619.htm (16 March 2022)