John Nance Garner Quotes

The health of a nation is inversely proportional to the number of laws needed to govern it

The more laws, the less justice.

What is crucial is there be laws.

It's harder to pass a law than stop one.

Law that is sufficiently complex is indistinguishable from lawlessness.

Many people feel that we need the rule of law to eliminate our problems. But is it more laws that we need? We have many laws - thousands upon thousands of them - but they are constantly being broken.

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

If you laid all our laws end to end, there would be no end.

He who seeks to regulate everything by law, is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful.

People must live with the laws that we make.

I ... can sniff out a bureaucracy when I see it coming [in new legislation.]

The main product of government is laws.

Do you want to make a statement or do you want to make a law?

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

Good laws are produced by bad actions.

Laws are confusing documents. They get in the way of justice.

Laws or ordinances unobserved, or partially attended to, had better never have been made.

Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse.

Laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.

The man-made laws have been made by men who have not perceived the final goal towards which they are making. And that is why it is so important to insist upon the final thing first, and then all the regulations, all the disciplines, will follow.

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.

As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

I think everything should be governed by law. We don't want to keep secrets anymore.

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they serve.