Top 100 Quotes About Legislation
#1. I would consider all of the legislation which I have supported meaningless if I were to sit idly by, silent, during a period which may go down in history as an era when we permitted the curtailment of our liberties.
Dennis Chavez
#2. Awareness has changed so that every act for children, every piece of legislation recognizes that children are part of families and that it is within families that children grow and thrive or don't.
Bernice Weissbourd
#3. The Bush administration staunchly opposed legislation which would preserve overtime pay for all workers.
John Sweeney
#5. As the 109th Congress continues to debate legislation that will affect the lives of immigrants, it is important for us to remember that we are a nation of immigrants.
Jose Serrano
#6. For years, my colleagues and I - primarily Republicans but also some Democrats - have introduced legislation and written to the FCC asking the commission to cease attempts to regulate the Internet unless given the clear authority to do so by Congress.
Mary Bono
#7. The National Popular Vote is about getting states to convert from the winner-take-all rule. The states that pass the legislation will assign all their electoral votes to the candidate that got the most votes in the country, not just in the state.
Tom Golisano
#8. Politics, to a degree, is about legislation, administration. You can't be there in the trenches.
Diane Paulus
#9. Parliament has become so undermined it is almost unable to do the job that people expect of it. A glaring example is the budget bill, where there was no thoughtful debate or scrutiny of the legislation.
Sheila Fraser
#10. There is no filmmaking legislation because distributors are not interested in sharing their money with the film industry - for instance, by giving a percentage of ticket sales back to filmmakers.
Andrzej Wajda
#11. I mean, if you go back to 1960 on major pieces of legislation, the filibuster was used about eight percent of the time.
Tom Udall
#12. The ideas embodied in the New Deal Legislation were a compilation of those which had come to maturity under Herbert Hoover's aegis. We all of us owed much to Hoover
Rexford Tugwell
#13. From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. The Republicans claim they are for strengthening Pell grants when the truth is that over the last four years, their legislation has done the exact opposite.
John Conyers
#15. If the president is failing to disclose material facts with regard to legislation being presented to the Congress on a question as important as war and peace, I think it does impair the level of trust that the House and the Senate have for this administration.
John Dingell
#16. I appreciate the decision made by Gov. Brewer to veto this legislation. I hope that we can now move on from this controversy and assure the American people that everyone is welcome to live, work and enjoy our beautiful State of Arizona.
John McCain
#17. 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
#18. Today, our actions must be motivated only by our intense desire to achieve a just and lasting peace. The compassion and charity of the American people should be reflected in this legislation, though sadly, they are silenced.
Nick Rahall
#19. As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.
Isabel Paterson
#20. The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection.
Elihu Root
#21. At a time when we have much work to do to address our Nation's critical infrastructure, and, as I said, which is currently in dire need of upgrade and repair, this legislation is also a jobs bill and is obviously a jobs creator.
Howard Coble
#22. We must consider bringing forward legislation that will facilitate the creation and implementation of businesses in Haiti. Overall, we must better position the country to compete for new market opportunities.
Laurent Lamothe
#23. I would introduce and support legislation to send Roe v. Wade back to the states.
Rand Paul
#24. National legislation will prevent other states' flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents,
Barack Obama
#25. I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them.
Hugh Downs
#26. I will continue to support legislation that provides American families and Seniors affordable health care.
Ed Pastor
#27. The ANC party from time to time comes with legislation which, if accepted and if not nullified by the constitution of court, would have the effect of undermining the constitution and eroding its values.
F. W. De Klerk
#28. Obamacare is bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor, and that's what Americans most dislike about this legislation.
Jim Jordan
#29. That's possible, and in fact the legislation, the politics should graduate the advantages towards those who have children and give less to those who don't have children.
Rocco Buttiglione
#30. But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.
Nelson Mandela
#31. Selfishness and fear are at the root of (pro-abortion) legislation ... We in the Church have a great struggle to defend life ... life is a gift not a threat.
Pope Benedict XVI
#32. In order to keep up with the criminals and to protect our national security, the solution is clear: we need legislation to ensure that telephone companies and other carriers provide law enforcement with access to this new technology.
Louis J. Freeh
#33. I didn't make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years. And I just focused almost exclusively on my initiatives for national crime legislation, foreign policy issues ...
Joe Biden
#34. The great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community ... that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same.
John Quincy Adams
#35. We demand that segregation be ended in every school district in the year 1963! We demand that we have effective civil rights legislation - no compromise, no filibuster - and that include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, FEPC and the right to vote.
Bayard Rustin
#36. Live to fight another day on better legislation.
Dana Perino
#37. The Patriot Act is the most egregious piece of legislation to ever leave Congress since the Alien and Sedition Acts, John Ashcroft and every member of Congress who voted for it should be indicted.
Michael Badnarik
#38. I'm an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.
Daniel Radcliffe
#39. The Law of the Twelve Tables, a Roman legislation circa 450 BC, actually required a father to put to death any deformed child (Cito necatus insignis ad deformitatem puer esto). (Modern moral philosophers, like Joseph Fletcher and Princeton University's Peter Singer, advocate the same thing.)
Robert J. Hutchinson
#40. We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs.
Doug Elmendorf
#41. 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.
#42. Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
Frederic Bastiat
#43. Last year, I was proud to be an original co-sponsor of legislation that would increase federal judges' salaries by more than 40 percent. It also built in a cost of living adjustment, so the Judicial Branch would not be dependent on the Legislative Branch for increases each year.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
#44. The political status legislation which emerged in Congress in 1990 and 1991 did not receive the support needed for enactment into law during my tenure as Attorney General.
Dick Thornburgh
#45. Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.
Felix Frankfurter
#46. Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like 'reading down', it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial reaction to overbroad legislation.
Albie Sachs
#47. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#48. I don't believe an Alliance government should sponsor legislation on abortion or a referendum on abortion.
Stephen Harper
#49. We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will ... authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional.
Arlen Specter
#50. Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation:
John Stuart Mill
#51. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.
James Madison
#52. Free market economists frequently see minimum wage legislation as mere political intervention. However, there are decent economic theories which show that, under certain circumstances, minimum wages can be beneficial, as it makes workers more productive.
Ha-Joon Chang
#53. Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words 'climate change' in public again, much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction, the movement has been in a funk.
Jeff Goodell
#54. A lot of so-called rich, according to this legislation, make $250,000. That's a lot of money, but it is not rich.
Bernard Goldberg
#55. And how about doing the job we hired you gentlemen and ladies for? Start doing it by reading the legislation you pass. If you don't know what it says, don't vote for it.
Kenneth Eade
#56. If the Union is once severed, the line of separation will grow wider and wider, and the controversies which are now debated and settled in the halls of legislation will then be tried in fields of battle and determined by the sword.
Andrew Jackson
#57. Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
Milton Friedman
#58. I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer's gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.
Ted Cruz
#59. The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.
Bernie Sanders
#60. Prohibition ... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes ... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
Abraham Lincoln
#61. Republicans are pushing legislation forward that will improve the effectiveness of and bring more accountability to U.S. foreign assistance around the world and bring democracy even further into the light.
Virginia Foxx
#62. 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
#63. I said last year, and I still believe there are the votes in the House to pass Death with Dignity legislation.
Shap Smith
#64. 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
#65. Land surveyors can spend as much time reading legislation, bylaws, and engineering documents as we spend in front of an instrument in the field or calculating coordinates for a subdivision. We are mathematicians, historians, project managers, advocates, engineers, and even chainsaw operators!
Mark Mason
#66. In general, we draw no distinction between intention and the crime itself, and this is an instance of the superiority of Soviet legislation to bourgeois legislation
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#67. Rather than waiting to restore fiscal responsibility after we pass legislation, we must work to ensure we remain committed to it as we draft legislation.
Gary Miller
#68. For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.
Barney Frank
#69. This year I hope to introduce legislation that would require Power Administrations to list direct and indirect costs associated with ESA compliance as a line item on customer's power bills.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
#70. We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation.
Robert A. Caro
#71. Maybe I was naive, but I thought the whole point of being an MP was to scrutinise legislation and improve it.
Sarah Wollaston
#72. It is admitted by everybody that rights and privileges enjoyed by the Roman Catholic minority in Manitoba down to 1890, were taken away by legislation of 1890.
Charles Tupper
#73. What I am anxious to do is to secure my legislation ... What I want to do is to get through that, and if I can point to a record of usefulness of that kind, I am entirely willing to quit office.
William Howard Taft
#74. In our system of government, an opposition party doesn't have the ability to pass legislation, but it has the ability to massively screw things up.
Alex Pareene
#75. Everything African-Americans - every freedom they have obtained - came from Republicans, not Democrats. All the way back to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Civil Rights movement. Civil Rights legislation was passed by a Republican Congress.
Rafael Cruz
#76. The snow, the effect of concealment and secrecy it creates, makes him think of the brutality of the wartime legislation to forbid and violently extract secrets. It is as if the hushed white landscape is showing how sacrosanct are our secrets, how much of our vitality is bound up in them.
Glenn Haybittle
#77. I introduced legislation in the Senate to prohibit President Obama's amnesty. The House of Representatives stood up and led. It took the legislation I introduced and it passed it. But the Senate Democrats stood as one uniform block and said, 'No, we will do nothing to stop amnesty.'
Ted Cruz
#78. O Logic: born gatekeeper to the Temple of Science, victim of capricious destiny: doomed hitherto to be the drudge of pedants: come to the aid of thy master, Legislation
Jeremy Bentham
#79. Cut, Cap and Balance is worst legislation in history.
Harry Reid
#80. Years ago, we all talked about recycling and not dumping things down your drain and all of that, but talking doesn't help much. Basically, it's going to have to be legislation because the impact is so huge and diversified.
Ted Danson
#81. Every piece of legislation which came to my desk in the coming years as the governor, I came down on the side of preserving the sanctity of life.
Mitt Romney
#82. 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
#83. Environmentalists hate sprawl - except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill.
Michelle Malkin
#84. As I've learned in my time in the state legislature, important legislation is always a work in progress.
Marco Rubio
#85. 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
#86. The Washington Post speaking out against state legislation that he believed would let businesses deny services to gay, lesbian and transgender people. [Tim] Cook himself came out as gay in the pages of Bloomberg Businessweek.
Laura Sydell
#87. It's time for compassionate Americans to send a wake-up call to their members of Congress and demand passage of legislation to end the wholesale slaughter of America's horses once and for all.
Jane Velez-Mitchell
#88. The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.
Maelle Gavet
#89. The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy's deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or '79.
Jimmy Carter
#90. The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans have failed to bring up comprehensive energy reform or any piece of legislation for that matter that would lower gas prices, opting instead to give massive subsidies to the oil and gas industry.
Rosa DeLauro
#91. The gun legislation was doomed the minute it became associated with the words common sense.
Dana Gould
#92. This week I was proud to join with my colleagues to help pass two important, common-sense pieces of legislation that will limit the frivolous lawsuits by trial attorneys and personal injury lawyers that clog our courts and hurt our small businesses.
Bob Ney
#93. Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has given the Government's support to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill.
Keith O'Brien
#94. Norwegian legislation is more in conformity with the rules of the European Union than most member states.
Jose Manuel Barroso
#95. It is a rare piece of legislation indeed where there is so much agreement about the goals.
Mike Pence
#96. We have other legislation that all of you are aware that I have been so active on, with my colleagues here, and that is to shut down the gun shows.
Frank Lautenberg
#97. I think the American Dream should be about a greater progressive legislation that allows for what I call a necessary future world of cooperational humanism.
Bobby Seale
#98. I'm not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.
Alan Greenspan
#99. Society would not tolerate legislation declaring that the theory that the sun circles the earth be given equal time with the theory of a heliocentric solar system; it should not pay attention to the equally preposterous notions of scientific creationism
Robert E. Ornstein
#100. I think that there's been a lot of people in Congress that didn't know all the ins and outs of the Constitution. I think we have a whole roomful of people that have record legislation in terms of quantity of pages that didn't read it.
Rick Santelli
