Moral Legislation Quotes

I object to Parliament trying to regulate private morality in matters which only affects the person who commits the offence.

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

You must legislate morality.

If anyone tells you that you cannot legislate morality, remeber that legislation IS morality.

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

We do it all the time, we legislate taste. We do it with the tax code. Churches and children get a tax break, because it's assumed that we all agree that we want to encourage churches and children. I don't. I don't. That's my opinion. I don't want to encourage either churches or children, and it's a very bad idea to put them together.

The end of all political struggle is to establish morality as the basis for all legislation.

I think you should live your moral values. But the last thing, the very last thing that government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices. And that is the fundamental difference between a Clinton-Kaine ticket and a Trump- Pence ticket that wants to punish women who make that choice.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

Much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.

The conservative movement, to which I subscribe, has as one of its basic tenets the belief that government should stay out of people’s private lives. Government governs best when it governs least – and stays out of the impossible task of legislating morality. But legislating someone’s version of morality is exactly what we do by perpetuating discrimination against gays.

There are always those who say legislation can't solve the problem. There is a half-truth involved here. It is true that legislation cannot solve the whole problem. It can solve some of the problem. It may be true that morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.

Priestly was the first (unless it was Becarria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth--that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

It's said the religious right wants to force its faith on the public. But whose faith are we talking about?... Everyone who operates in the political arena wants to see their morals reflected in our laws and governmental institutions - including the National Organization of Women, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the American Civil Liberties Union, whether or not they are willing to admit it.

I think all we should legislate is morality.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

Like other forms of gambling, wagering on the Internet isn't illegal because it's bad. It's bad because we've chosen to make it illegal.

Insights into erotic life belong to art, not education. But sometimes these have to be spelled out for the illiterates. And it ismainly a matter of convincing the illiterates, for they are the ones who write the penal code.

If we have learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot Federalize Virtue.

If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin.

People must be changed...goodness cannot be legislated.

I think that one of the errors that social conservatives made - particularly Christian social conservatives - was a belief that they needed to use the power of government to try to shore up the various things that they believe make up a life well-lived.

In Norway, as in America, prohibition has been carried through from moral motives; but the outcome has been highly unfavorable. In the first place, much more and far worse home-made spirits are drunk, so that intoxication has increased instead of decreasing. In the second place, Portugal and Spain, whose sales to Norway were suddenly stopped, grew furious and took revenge by ceasing to buy Norwegian klip-fish (salted and dried fish), which had been the chief nourishment of the poorer part of the population in those countries. Norwegian finances suffered severely in consequence.

To discover the rules of society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence, who could understand the passions of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity with our nature but knew it to the full, whose happiness was independent of ours, but who would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, who would be content to wait in the fullness of time for a distant glory, and to labour in one age to enjoy the fruits in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.