Draconian Quotes

St Mary Magdalene church was on the left-hand side of the road, set back behind a low brick wall, well-trimmed topiary and a narrow fringe of grass studded with lichen-covered gravestones from a hundred years ago. A sign had been tied to the railings: two capital As set inside a blue triangle that was itself set within a blue circle. An arrow pointed towards the church. Milton felt a disconcerting moment of doubt and paused by the gate to adjust the lace of his shoe. He looked up and down the street, satisfying himself that he was not observed. He knew the consequences for being seen in a place like this would be draconian and swift; suspension would be immediate, the termination of his employment would follow soon after, and there was the likelihood of prosecution. He was ready to leave the service, but on his own terms and not like that. ~ Mark Dawson

Note to future selves: Never buy anything. You will just have to pack it in a suitcase one day and be at the mercy of airline attendants and their draconian weight regulations. ~ Jessica Pan

Pension reform can be hard to talk about. In the long run, reform now means fewer demands for layoffs and less draconian measures in the future. It's in the best interest of all Californians to fix this system now. ~ Jerry Brown

The rights of copyright holders need to be protected, but some draconian remedies that have been suggested would create more problems than they would solve. ~ Patrick Leahy

eyes blacker than midnight paralyzed her. A draconian was in fact sitting in the church waiting for her, but it wasn't Kiev. It wasn't even Raum. It was Ash. ~ Annette Marie

But in 1921, just as the government had once adopted a ration system to pay the Osage for seized land - just as it always seemed to turn its gospel of enlightenment into a hammer of coercion - Congress implemented even more draconian legislation controlling how the Osage could spend their money. ~ David Grann

Right now it might seem draconian to charge for access to information we have come to expect for free, but it would feel very different if you knew what other people were also paying you at the same time for information service you have fractionally contributed to in the course of your life. ~ Jaron Lanier

Could I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.? Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot. ~ Michael Mann

The women of the Malesian Tales were however modelled after the lovely women of Singapore, the most urbane of the Malesian cities & the winners of the War of the Sexes.These lovely women,who belonged to a unique sub-species known as the "Singapore Girl", were spawn when the little City State imposed draconian measures in order to ensure its survival- measures covering population control, civic-consciousness, national hygiene & military preparedness- just as Sparta did during Milesian times. And thus, the Singapore girls,just as the girls of Sparta, were constantly in a state of military preparedness when it came to men.[INTRO] ~ Nicholas Chong

The massive prison-building project that began in the 1980s created the means of concentrating and managing what the capitalist system had implicitly declared to be a human surplus. In the meantime, elected officials and the dominant media justified the new draconian sentencing practices, sending more and more people to prison in the frenzied drive to build more and more prisons by arguing that this was the only way to make our communities safe from murderers, rapists, and robbers. ~ Angela Y. Davis

Foreign, eh?" Hetty frowned. "Then I am glad Mr. Pinter is looking into his background. You have to be careful with foreigners."
"Right. I wouldn't want to rush into marriage with a stranger," Celia said tartly. "Oh, wait, yes, I would. My grandmother has dictated that I must."
Hetty stifled a smile. "Sarcasm does not become you, dear girl."
"Draconian ultimatums don't become you, Gran."
"Complain if you must, but I still mean to see you married by year's end. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

It may seem draconian, but the best recommendation I can make is to completely avoid grains. ~ David Perlmutter

Godzilla, you see, is toppled, is depleted, is immobile and breathless, the non-conversative dictator and his polemical primeval tyranny dashed to social smithereens... for some his demise will evince agitation, adulation and appraisal, but for me, Yasuhiro Dustin T-Bird, it returns the lingering largesse of an inconsolable fear. The fear is this: that there's a thing as big as pirate continents in the China Sea that we've together mythologised up to now currently obstructing the procession of metropolitan traffic all the way to Yoyogi. His formidable draconian jaw with its legend of gargantuan teeth slacks open like a lifelong foe's long-withheld liability, and sulphur rents the air in acrid, acid plumes as though the most cultured and violent yellowcake fart in categorical memory. ~ Kirk Marshall

Nature hates vacuum. Once a society is depleted of moral values, it creates a vacuum that will be filled by doctrines that hold to such values, even though those values are draconian and oppressive. In fact the more a society is devoid of morality, the more promising prudish and unpermissive doctrines look. Licentious societies create a spiritual vacuum that legalistic religions such as Islam fill. ~ Ali Sina

Now take a man who is sensitive, cultured, and of delicate conscience. What he feels kills him more surely than the material punishment. The judgement which he himself pronounces on his crime is more pitiless than that of the most severe tribunal, the most Draconian law. He lives side by side with another convict, who has not once during all his time in prison reflected on the murder he is expiating. He may even consider himself innocent. Are there not also poor devils who commit crimes in order to be sent to hard labour, and thus escape from a freedom which is much more painful than confinement? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This collaboration between global technology companies and the state is enabling a worrying level of draconian oversight into our everyday lives, providing those who wish to control us with the tools to identify, intimidate and incarcerate any wrong-thinkers. Once again, those who deem themselves the most virtuous have little qualms about imposing their virtue onto others by restricting their rights – only this time they are backed up by some seriously powerful technological hardware. ~ Sean A. Culey

In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East the forces available for establishing security in these areas will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying power as is appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist among the population. The competent commanders must find the means of keeping order not by demanding more security forces but by applying suitable Draconian methods. ~ Alfred Jodl

GOD GRACE BY BIRTH FEMALE PNEUMA RHADAMANTHINE DRACONIAN HEBETIC PUBERAL THAN MEN. OBVIOUSY, MODERN ERUDITED WOMEN WILL PLY PILOT EITHER INTRAMURAL AND ALFRSCO HAP DEXTEROUSLY .NO DOUBT AT ALL. ~ Various

Draconian limits on economic growth and on the use of the automobile should not be necessary in order to give Americans clean air at levels they are willing to pay for, but it will require significant Federal, State, and local leadership and innovative approaches from government and industry. ~ George H. W. Bush

Our society has come to adopt many of the draconian measures Orwell
tried to warn us about. Cameras monitor citizens from nearly every street
corner in the United Kingdom, and there are a steadily growing number
of them mounted on traffic lights in America. The fact that Orwell's 1984
remains a part of the required reading curriculum in many high schools
across the country is laughably ironic. What is truly sad is how many readers
acknowledge the brilliant foresight of Orwell yet fail to grasp how closely
present-day America (and England) resemble Winston Smith's Oceania. ~ Donald Jeffries

I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best form of protection is to be incredibly good at what you do and keep good discipline in class. ~ Jonathan Kozol

Together we can and must fight for justice for our children and protect them from draconian tax cuts and budget choices that threaten their survival, education and preparation for the future. If they are not ready for tomorrow, neither is America. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

...and according to Kings, at some point you sent two bears to maul a bunch of children. I believe forty-two of them, for taunting a bald child?"

"I know it seems a bit harsh now, but you have to understand, that was a long time ago. These were the days of the Hammurabic and Draconian Code. If you wanted to get someone's attention, you had to have the harshest penalties. People were going crazy for that kind of stuff. Besides, those kids were taunting one of my followers named Elisha. ~ Dylan Callens

The police state We now have well over 100,000 domestic federal law enforcement agents armed and ready to enforce the laws to "make everyone safe and secure." We also have our TSA "friends" at the airports protecting us with an army of over 50,000 bureaucrats. The Department of Homeland Security has more than 240,000 employees. The FBI has about 35,000 employees. Around 90,000 IRS employees enforce draconian tax laws that limit self-sufficiency, put people in fear, and are used as a political tool to help suppress dissenters to the empire. There are many thousands of others "making sure we're safe and secure from our foreign enemies" while our domestic enemies, including politicians, bureaucrats, and government profiteers, are ignored. ~ Ron Paul

the Code of Hammurabi of 1750 BC. Crafted to govern the First Babylonian Empire, it codified the supremacy of the rule of law. Its punishments may seem draconian today, but it was still original in putting forth the idea that no one, not even the ruler, was above the law. There was a limit on the power of the state; even on the king himself. ~ Kent Augustson

Senators from his own party soon began to warn that Obama was secretly expanding the government's surveillance powers even beyond those authorized by Bush. Obama allowed the civil liberties panel that was supposed to provide oversight of the government's war on terror to remain idle and only partially staffed for years. His administration launched a draconian crackdown on the press, spying on reporters while prosecuting more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. ~ James Risen

Post Tuesday, SWAT teams can now be used to go after suspect Arab Americans or, indeed, anyone who might be guilty of terrorism, a word without legal definition (how can you fight terrorism by suspending habeas corpus since those who want their corpuses released from prison are already locked up?). But in the post-Oklahoma City trauma, Clinton said that those who did not support his draconian legislation were terrorist coconspirators who wanted to turn "America into a safe house for terrorists. ~ Gore Vidal

The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon's baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconian style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins. ~ Zen Cho

Private-sector firms are increasingly active in the prison industry and they and the militantly unionized correctional officers, almost all unskilled labor, constantly lead public demands for more criminal statutes and more draconian penalties. ~ Conrad Black

The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement. ~ Frances O'Grady

The most effective system of Internet control is not the one that has the most sophisticated and draconian system of censorship, but the one that has no need for censorship whatsoever. ~ Evgeny Morozov

Twitter wanted to become a more egalitarian justice system, but instead it became a draconian one. ~ Jon Ronson

Growing up in Wales was a pretty Draconian experience with religion. ~ John Cale

Experiments in digitizing and running neural wetware under emulation are well established; some radical libertarians claim that, as the technology matures, death with its draconian curtailment of property and voting rights will become the biggest civil rights issue of all. ~ Charles Stross

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime. ~ Tom Shales

The draconian prohibitions of the Taliban years and the gains Afghan women have achieved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001 are now well known and often cited: Today, Afghans lucky enough to live in secure regions can go to school, women may work in offices, and the burqa is no longer mandatory. ~ Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Al Qaeda is using our liberal justice system," he continued. I really don't know what liberal justice system he was talking about: the U.S. broke the world record for the number of people it has in prison. Its prison population is over two million, more than any other country in the world, and its rehabilitation programs are a complete failure. The United States is the "democratic" country with the most draconian punishment system; in fact, it is a good example of how draconian punishments do not help in stopping crimes. Europe is by far more just and humane, and the rehab programs there work, so the crime rate in Europe is decisively lower than the U.S. But the American proverb has it, "When the going gets rough, the rough get going." Violence naturally produces violence; the only loan you can make with a guarantee of payback is violence. It might take some time, but you will always get your loan back. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

I have - I have more than an interesting task in piloting Wales into our new democracy, without wanting to exercise draconian powers on behalf of anybody else - I can assure of that. ~ Ron Davies

Phil Gramm had a stump speech about how his mother's devotion kept him from being an academic failure in life. She got him into a special school that turned him around - under a government program for the children of deceased veterans. He was repeatedly asked at press conferences why he would then turn around and support draconian cuts in federal funding for education. He never had an answer. ~ Gail Collins

At today's prices for medicines, doctors and hospitals-if the latter are available at any price-only millionaires can afford to be hurt or sick and pay for it. Very few people want socialized medicine in the U.S. But pressure for it is going to appear with the same hurricane force as the demand for pollution control if the medicine men and hospital operators don't take soon some Draconian measures ... At the present rate of doctor fees and hospital costs under Medicare and Medicaid plans [taxpayers] are shovelling in billions with nothing but escalation in sight. ~ Malcolm Forbes