Quotes about War On Alcohol

Al Capone

Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a business man. When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive [in Chicago] it's hospitality.

Alexander Gordon

He [Peter the Great] took his bottle heartily, so must all the company; for when he was merry himself he loved to see everybody so; though at the same time he could not endure habitual drinkers, for such he thought unfit for business.

The distinction between recreational drinking and heavy drinking is a subtle one and rarely made until modern times. Most leaders who would not have heavy drinkers in positions of responsibility were usually themselves teetotalers and they were very rare. Heavy drinkers and alcoholics have been in positions of responsibility throughout history including modern times—eg House Ways & Means Chairman Wilbur Mills and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Peter was unusual in that he made the distinction.

Milton Friedman

If there is a good case to be made for the illegalization of drugs, there is a better case to be made for the illegalization for tobacco and alcohol.

Friedman was an advocate for the legalization of illicit drugs, claiming that the harm that is done by making drugs illegal is greater than that which would occur if drugs were legalized. He also observed that alcohol kills times the number of Americans than does illegal drugs and tobacco kills four times as many as alcohol.

Cotton Mather

There was one civil custom used in (and in few but) the English nation, which this gentleman did endeavour to abolish in this country; and that was, the usage of drinking to one another. For although by drinking to one another, no more is meant than an act of courtesie, when one going to drink, does invite another to do so too, for the same ends with himself; nevertheless the governour considered the impertinency and insignifcancy of this usage, as to any of those ends that are usually pretended for it ; and that indeed it ordinarily served for no ends at all, but only to provoke persons unto, unseasonable and perhaps unreasonable drinking, and at last produce that abominable health-drinking.

Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop

Roy Asa Haynes

Is the nation able to enforce its own laws -- its own charter - in the face of an unsympathetic and actively hostile minority?

The minority turned into a majority.

Roy Asa Haynes

Prohibition is the greatest effort for human advancement and betterment ever attempted in history

Chinese Proverb

The benefit of drinking alcohol is very minimal and the harm of it is as bad as what a knife can do.

Maryland

An Act to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors in the City of Annapolis, or within five miles thereof, to minors and people of color.

Joseph Lister

Opium soothes; alcohol maddens.

Lister only compared opium in its then usual form. Stronger opiate derivatives such as Heroin and morphine were not studied by him at the time.

War On Alcohol Quotes