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Prohibition Quotes

Browse 296 quotes about Prohibition.

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Prohibition Quotes

“It is illegitimate to conclude from the prohibition anything regarding the nature of what is prohibited; for the prohibition proceeds by dishonouring the guilty, that is to say, by inducing a disfigured or displaced image of the thing that is really prohibited or desired. Indeed, this is how social repression prolongs itself by means of psychic repression without which it would have no grip on desire.”

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Author:Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari
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“Anna Schrader was another of the women who came to Portland during the Girl Rush, arriving in 1910. Census records indicate she was married at the age of eighteen, presumably in Minnesota, where she was born and raised. She became a gadfly for the local Portland police and provided them with a great deal of useful information regarding bootlegging during Prohibition. This was possible because of her affair with police lieutenant William Breuning, who had gotten her the job of "private detective.”

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Book:Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign
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“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.' All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was: There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man! Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”

WarHistoryUnited StatesBirthIsraelChinaAlcoholAstronomyNewspapersCommunismBritainCensorshipMarsGodsUnited NationsDiplomacyAstrologyAlcoholismProhibitionNatoHitlerJewsMaoNazisBreastfeedingUssrBeijingAntisemitismBirthdaysCzechoslovakiaHoroscopesNurembergAlbaniaVaticanThe HagueCorfuDamascusPassover SederInternational Court Of JusticeCommunist Party Of ChinaAndrei GromykoCorfu Channel IncidentErnst Von WeizsackerFlushing MeadowsFlushing QueensHosni Zayim
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Alcohol is a far greater killer than all opiates. You can buy alcohol on any street corner throughout the world. It gets your brain, your liver. It destroys your morals, destroys your vitality, kills the sexual potential, and you become sluggish. It was a great pity that Prohibition failed. The experiment was too radical. Instead of barring it altogether, the dispensation of alcohol should have been under prescription, or some other control. Prohibition was one of the worthiest attempts of a group to impose their will upon the rest of the people. But of course if you prohibit something you deprive people of an essential liberty; when you deny the right of choice you oppose the greatest gift in the world. People will not stand for it. Alcohol makes man mad, leads to such strange behaviourism. Yet beer and liquor ads maintain newspapers, television, some huge portion of the national and the world economy. Drinker that I am, I think essentially I am the victim of an addiction that is here in the world, revealed to all, exposed to all. It is there. We who are weak take to it and are destroyed by it, but is essentially a weakness of governments everywhere to allow this poison to circulate like a river through the bloodstream of the human race. As one of the heartiest drinkers in the world, I speak with a voice of authority.”

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Book:My Wicked, Wicked Ways
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“Quand les premiers tirs retentirent, la tête d’un gars explosa à un mètre de mon visage. Mon corps se pétrifia : je n’étais plus qu’une sculpture attendant qu’on la vandalise. Roy me projeta au sol avant de me gifler : — Réveille-toi, gamin ! Les sans-visage tombaient comme des mouches. Des membres survolaient mon corps allongé, contrastant avec le ciel estival qui semblait se moquer de l’événement.”

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Book:A PASTOR'S STORY (Ce qu'il reste)
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“Its magnificence was indescribable, and its magnitude was inconceivable. She felt overwhelmed in the presence of its greatness. Pg 87”

BookFictionNovelNew YorkImmigrationHistorical FictionWorld War IWomen S RightsItalyProhibitionSuffrage1920sStatue Of LibertyWwiEllis IslandCafe SocietyHell S KitchenSuffragist MovementForty Years In A DayItalian American Book40 Years And A Day40 Years In A DayBest Historical FictionDianne VigoritoMona MarzanoMona RodriguezNew Historical FictionTop Fiction
Author:Mona Rodriguez FORTY YEARS IN A DAY
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“Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).”

BookFictionNovelNew YorkImmigrationHistorical FictionWorld War IWomen S RightsItalyProhibitionSuffrage1920sStatue Of LibertyWwiEllis IslandCafe SocietyHell S KitchenSuffragist MovementForty Years In A DayItalian American Book40 Years And A Day40 Years In A DayBest Historical FictionDianne VigoritoMona MarzanoMona RodriguezNew Historical FictionTop Fiction
Author:Mona Rodriguez FORTY YEARS IN A DAY
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“Our way would seem quite familiar to the Romans, more by far than the Greek way. Socrates in the Symposium, when Alcibiades challenged him to drink two quarts of wine, could have done so or not as he chose, but the diners-out of Horace's day had no such freedom. He speaks often of the master of the drinking, who was always appointed to dictate how much each man was to drink. Very many unseemly dinner parties must have paved the way for that regulation. A Roman in his cups would've been hard to handle, surly, quarrelsome, dangerous. No doubt there had been banquets without number which had ended in fights, broken furniture, injuries, deaths. Pass a law then, the invariable Roman remedy, to keep drunkenness within bounds. Of course it worked both ways: everybody was obliged to empty the same number of glasses and the temperate man had to drink a great deal more than he wanted, but whenever laws are brought in to regulate the majority who have not abused their liberty for the sake of the minority who have, just such results come to pass. Indeed, any attempt to establish a uniform average in that stubbornly individual phenomenon, human nature, will have only one result that can be foretold with certainty: it will press hardest on the best.”

DrinkingEqualityRomeProhibitionDrunkennessDecadenceRegulationsSymposiumHoraceAlcibiadesManagerial EliteManagerial StateRoman Life
Book:The Roman Way
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“There has never been a 'war on drugs'! In our history we can only see an ongoing conflict amongst various drug users – and producers. In ancient Mexico the use of alcohol was punishable by death, while the ritualistic use of mescaline was highly worshipped. In 17th century Russia, tobacco smokers were threatened with mutilation or decapitation, alcohol was legal. In Prussia, coffee drinking was prohibited to the lower classes, the use of tobacco and alcohol was legal.”

AlcoholCoffeeMarijuanaRegulationDrugsTobaccoProhibitionWar On DrugsCaffeinePrussiaLegalizationMescalineDrug UserLegalize
Author:Sebastian Marincolo
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“With drug use related harms, explanatory models are often presented as predictive tools, even though they ‘are [rarely if ever] predictive of consequent behavior’ or outcomes. Hence, we feel confident in asserting at outset, that prohibition based approaches in drug policy lack a sound basis in empirical research (despite sounding logical, i.e. remove drugs or the means of their production and less drugs will be available to users, thus minimising or eliminating harm), and are not animated by well-defined goals, goals that are not only consistent with the ethical and humanitarian aims of public health policy in general, but also with the fundamental principles of democracy) such as empowering or enabling those best placed to act, but by beliefs, assumptions, hypotheses and expectations.”

BeliefDemocracyPolicyEthicsHumanitarianHarmDrugsProhibitionPublic HealthDrug PolicyExplanatory ModelPredictive
Author:Daniel Waterman
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“Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”

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Author:Milton Friedman
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“My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You're a lawbreaker. It's just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?”

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Author:Orson Welles
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“Nobody tells the history of marijuana and its prohibition like Russ Belville does. He has a special talent for presenting scholarship in a remarkably engaging way. That’s why I turned to Russ when I needed someone to present on the subject to the annual staff retreat of the Drug Policy Alliance. And it’s why I repeatedly recommend him for speaking and media opportunities. He’s good!”

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Author:Ethan Nadelmann
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“Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender's teeth in retribution.”

FactsEyeChristianJesusBeliefChristJesus ChristResponseScriptureTeethLimitationInterpretationPenaltiesDeath PenaltyMosesProhibitionRetributionHebrewOffendersFerventContradictingEye For An Eye
Book:Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
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“By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.”

SocialPracticeIllnessMedicalAgentsPretendingConventionsDisguiseInterventionProhibitionSocial ControlDisobeying
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“I agree that marijuana laws are overdue for an overhaul. I also favor the medical use of marijuana -- if it's prescribed by a physician. I cannot understand why the federal government should interfere with the doctor-patient relationship, nor why it would ignore the will of a majority of voters who have legally approved such legislation.”

IfsShouldUseGovernmentLawDoctorsAgreeMajorityPatientMedicalFavorsVotersMarijuanaPhysiciansInterfereLegislationFederal GovernmentProhibitionApprovedOverdue
Author:Abigail Van Buren
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“In order for the State in the person of school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, it must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”

PersonsStatesShowsAbleActionSchoolDesireOrderOpinionParticularExpressionMereOfficialsJustifyFreedom Of SpeechDiscomfortProhibitionViewpointsAccompany
Author:Abe Fortas
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“To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.”

WantFeelsMeanReasonOpportunityGrowsFreedomConditionsRespectConscienceProhibitionFree Thought
Book:Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer
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