Effective Legislation Quotes

A good law is one that holds, whether you recognize it or not; a bad law is one that cannot, however much you ordain it.

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.'

I want to do what I can to make the law make sense to citizens and businesses alike. I want the laws to assist them in worthwhile endeavors, not to stand as bureaucratic obstacles.

The American people didn't send us to Congress to post our sympathies on social media. You can do that without going through the trouble of getting elected to Congress. This job is about setting rules that better protect us and our children.

You can pass all the gun legislation you want. None of it will make me feel any more or less safe than I do right at this moment.

I was involved in legislating dozens of laws, perhaps hundreds. But my glory didn't lie in legislative work, if there is any glory in it. The Israeli law books are full of laws that aren't enforced anyway.

Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

This battle for 'common-sense' gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, 'gun control' legislation. Good news - if you're a crook.

Experience has shown that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a populous state to be run by good laws.

What sort of a brain-dead idiot does it take to actually believe that gun laws will prevent criminals from obtaining and carrying guns?

There are certain things in gun control that have a certain public appeal, but when you're legislating you need to look at the research on what works, what doesn't, and what really has an impact, recognizing you're never going to do away entirely with gun violence

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.

I am not in a position to say whether we can legislate effectively in reference to this matter [Communist propaganda], but I do know that exposure in a democracy of subversive activities is the most effective weapon that we have in our possession.

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are mode.

I think some combined pressure could go a long way, could establish the fact that this legislation did pass and we mean business by it. We mean to have it enforced, we mean to have it become effective.

If you really want to get something done in Washington, it has to be done in a bi-Partisan way.

Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.

It won't do just to pass harmless legislation. It will have to be really good legislation.

It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

A plural Legislature is as necessary to good Government as a single Executive. It is not enough that your Legislature should be numerous; it should also be divided. Numbers alone are not a sufficient Barrier against the Impulses of Passion, the Combinations of Interest, the Intrigues of Faction, the Haste of Folly, or the Spirit of Encroachment. One Division should watch over and control the other, supply its Wants, correct its Blunders, and cross its Designs, should they be made up of the Portions of Sense and Knowledge which each Member brings to it.

If we elect people who have never been to public school, never had to worry about counting on Social Security, then how can they effectively legislate?

A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbid as few things as possible; a wise legislature would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man cannot and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government?

Will this massive outcry [about pollution] continue long enough to have effective results? Will federal and state laws be enacted with effective enforcement clauses? Will people be concerned long enough to pay the bill through higher prices? Will towns tole lost jobs when it proves too costly to clean obsolete plants?... I think so, but it sure won't be as easy as the present outcry and political oratory suggest. The answers to preserving a livable environment are not all simple, and some of the nuts now pushing simplistic cure-alls won't help bring about any lasting solutions.

Parliament is a potent engine, and its enactments must always do something, but they very seldom do what the originators of these enactments meant.

We have tried voluntary codes and we have tried free markets, but they have not worked, so we need to try something else. Legislation is not a panacea for all the inequalities in the workplace, but it will go a long way towards stopping them. Effective employment legislation is needed