"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
Mark Twain

"For every prohibition you create you also create an underground."
Jello Biafra

"Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water."
W. C. Fields

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Albert Einstein

"Prohibition has made nothing but trouble."
Al Capone

"If you are happy and you know it, clank your chains."
Anon

"The question arises, therefore, why cannabis is so regularly banned in countries where alcohol is permitted. [...] It may be that we can ban cannabis simply because the people who use it, or would do so, carry little weight in social matters and are relatively easy to control, whereas the alcohol user often carries plenty of weight in social matters and is difficult to control, as the U.S. prohibition era showed. It has yet to be shown, however, that the one is more socially or personally disruptive than the other."
Ph.D. H.B.M Murphy, M.D.

"Liquor prohibition led to the rise of organized crime in America, and drug prohibition has led to the rise of the gang problems we have now."
Drew Carey

"Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?"
Milton Friedman

"Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into."
Don Marquis

"No one has ever died from Marijuana, who wasn't shot by a cop...."
Jack Herer

"Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth."
Will Rogers

"Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work."
Will Rogers

"No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober."
Samuel Stiles

"Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws."
Publius Cornelius Tacitus

"If the lying stops, the system will collapse."
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

"What are politicians going to tell people when the Constitution is gone and we still have a drug problem?"
William Simpson

"If you say, 'Would there were no wine' because of the drunkards, then you must say, going on by degrees, 'Would there were no steel,' because of the murderers, 'Would there were no night,' because of the thieves, 'Would there were no light,' because of the informers, and 'Would there were no women,' because of adultery."
St. John Chrysostom: Homilies, c. 388

"Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security."
Frank Herbert

"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content."
P.J. Goebbels

"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent."
Adolf Hitler

"A drug is neither moral nor immoral - it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole"
Frank Zappa

People prefer to stay with problems they understand rather than look for solutions they're uncomfortable with.
Anon

"First they came for the communists and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me."
Pastor Martin Niemoller, Nazi concentration camp survivor

"When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it."
Anon

"Republic . . . it means people can live free, talk free, go or come, buy or sell, be drunk or sober, however they choose."
John Wayne

"Still if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory,because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."
Winston Churchill

"I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse."
Brendan Behan

"It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny."
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
U.S. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

How can you buy the sky? How can you own the rain and the wind? My mother told me, Every part of this earth is sacred to our people. Every pine needle. Every sandy shore. Every mist in the dark woods. Every meadow and humming insect. All are holy in the memory of our people. My father said to me, I know the sap that courses through the trees as I know the blood that flows in my veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the meadows, the ponies - all belong to the same family. The voice of my ancestors said to me, The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not simply water, but the blood of your grandfather's grandfather. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of memories in the life of our people. The water's murmur is the voice of your great-great-grandmother. The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and fed our children. You must give to the rivers the kindness you would give to any brother. The voice of my grandfather said to me, The air is precious. It shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave me my first breath also received my last sigh. You must keep the land and air apart and sacred, as a place where one can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers. When the last Red Man and Woman have vanished with their wilderness and their memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will the shores and the forest still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left? My ancestors said to me, This we know: The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth. The voice of my grandmother said to me, teach your children what you have been taught. The earth is our mother. What befalls the earth befalls all the sons and daughters of the earth. Hear my voice and the voice of my ancestors. The destiny of your people is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men? When the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone. Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what will happen when we say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? It will be the end of living and the beginning of survival. This we know: All things are connected like the blood that unites us. We did not weave the web of life; We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. If we sell you our land, care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land and the air and the rivers for your children's children and love it as we have loved it.

Chief Seattle, 1854