Thomas Jordan Jarvis Quotes

We have seen the evil of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in our midst; let us try prohibition and see what this will do for us.

Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.

I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear.

This day we have held a council, and it is agreed by the Shawnee in general that whatever rum is in our towns shall be broke and split and not drunk; and whosoever shall bring any rum or any sort of strong drink into our towns, Indian or white man, let it be little or much, it shall be broke or split in the presence of the whole town…

The Prophet hath cursed ten persons on account of wine: one, the first extractor of the juice of the grape for others; the second, for himself; the third, the drinker of it; the fourth, the bearer of it; the fifth, the person to whom it is brought; the sixth, the waiter; the seventh, the seller of it; the eighth, the eater of its price; the ninth, the buyer of it; the tenth, that person who hath purchased it for another.

[Referring to alcohol:] After the lapse of nearly fifty years of undisputed political freedom, the blood-freezing clank of a cruel bondage is still heard.

Evidence...proves that prohibition only drives drunkenness behind doors and into dark places, and does not cure it or even diminish it.

I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

All men, even those we call savages, have been so tormented by the passion for strong drinks, that limited as their capacities were, they were yet able to manufacture them.

It's not a crime to get drunk.

Would this country be better off if no one drank? Yes, it would be, but we tried that; it doesn't work. I don't want to tell anybody that they can't have as many drinks as they want every single night of the week as long as they don't get behind the wheel of a car.

The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.

There is no law, divine or human, that the saloon respects.

Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

I am the sworn, eternal and uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic.

But there's certainly only one thing I could never agree with George Galloway on. He's a teetotaller and wants to close all the bars in the House of Commons. That is just not on.

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

The greatest pleasure of this people [Russians] is drunkenness.

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is, in truth, the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.

Whether or not the world would be vastly benefitted by a total and final banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems to me not now open to question. Three-fourths of mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues, and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their hearts. Ought any, then, to refuse their aid in doing what good the good of the whole wold demands.

It is an unhappy thing that in later years a Kind of Drink called Rum has been common among us. They that are poor and wicked, too, can for a penny make themselves drunk.

Drunkenness was attacked in the same manner; it was discountenanced on every occasion by those who had charge of any department: its destructive and pernicious effects were frequently stated by his own more prudent comrades, at the proper moment when the individual was soberly suffering from the effects of his previous excess; pot- and public-houses were gradually removed from the immediate vicinity of their dwellings; the health and comfort of temperance were made familiar to them; by degrees drunkenness disappeared, and many who were habitual bacchanalians are now conspicuous for undeviating sobriety.

Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.