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.'
If one man in the country could take all the money, what was the use of passing any bills about it?
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke.
Cow-slaughter can never be stopped by law.
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
We've had an assault rifle ban in our country, and that did not accomplish the objectives. We had Columbine during the time that that ban was in place.
It won't do just to pass harmless legislation. It will have to be really good legislation.
The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.
We have never stopped sin by passing laws.
No bill works if it doesn't work in a zip code where somebody lives.
We can't lose precious time debating legislation that won't work.
I think culture precedes politics, and I think the attempts to try and legislate people's behavior... isn't going to be productive until the culture decides what they want to achieve.
When you pass a law you don't solve the problem. You state the problem.
If you're going to make a law, make a law that actually works. It's extraordinarily difficult.
