Perfectly Legal Quotes

In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, 'independent' regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections. ~ Ilana Mercer

2003 case before the Supreme Court in which Nike claimed that it had the First Amendment right to lie in its corporate marketing, a variation on the First Amendment right of free speech. (Except in certain contract and law enforcement/court situations, it's perfectly legal for human persons to lie in the United States. ~ Thom Hartmann

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. ~ Michelle Alexander

I am Lulu Deerdancer and I am twenty-nine years old and I am perfectly legal to enter this here homosexual establishment and partake in beverages and repetitive techno music."
"Because you both have been here before."
"Yes," I said.
"Hmm," the bouncer said.
Then Paul sneezed and his mustache flew off his face and landed on the cheek of the bouncer.
The silence that followed was slightly awkward.
"Huh," Paul said. "I guess that's easier than shaving. It'll certainly revolutionize the facial hair industry. ~ T.J. Klune

Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink, and the Tory party - the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it's happening. ~ Boris Johnson

But the man who, by dint of long study and sober reflection, has succeeded in training his mind not to detect evil in anything, to consider all human actions with the utmost indifference, to regard them all as the inevitable consequences of a power - however it's defined - which is sometimes good and sometimes perverse but always irresistible, and gives rise to both what men approve and to what they condemn and never allows anything to distract or thwart its operations, such a man, I say, as you will agree, sir, may be as happy behaving as I behave as you are in the career which you follow. Happiness is an abstraction, a product of the imagination. It is one manner of being moved and depends exclusively on our way of seeing and feeling. Apart from the satisfaction of our needs, there is no single thing which makes all men happy. Every day we observe one man made happy by the circumstance which makes his neighbour supremely miserable. There is therefore nothing which guarantees happiness. It can only exist for us in the form given to it by our physical constitution and our philosophical principles. [...] Nothing in the world is real, nothing which merits praise or blame, nothing deserving reward or punishment, nothing which is unlawful here and perfectly legal five hundred leagues away, in other words, there is no unchanging, universal good. ~ Marquis De Sade

Her eyes travel down to where he's gripping the handle of her suitcase. "What're you doing?" she asks, blinking at him.
"You looked like you needed some help."
Hadley just stares at him.
"And this way it's perfectly legal," he adds with a grin. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

Unfortunately, the trading of political influence for money has come back in a big way in American politics, this time in a form that is perfectly legal and much harder to eradicate. Criminalized bribery is narrowly defined in American law as a transaction in which a politician and a private party explicitly agree upon a specific quid pro quo exchange. What is not covered by the law is what biologists call reciprocal altruism, or what an anthropologist might label a gift exchange. In a relationship of reciprocal altruism, one person confers a benefit on another with no explicit expectation that it will immediately buy a return favor, unlike an impersonal market transaction. ~ Francis Fukuyama

Why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away? ~ George Carlin

In Illinois a pregnant woman who takes an illegal drug can be prosecuted for 'delivering a controlled substance to a minor.' This is an explicit recognition that the unborn is a person with rights of her own. But that same woman who is prosecuted and jailed for endangering her child is perfectly free to abort her child. In America today, it is illegal to harm your preborn child, but it is perfectly legal to kill him. ~ Randy Alcorn

Everything in the film [Tickling], which was vetted by lawyers, is perfectly legal. I'm not losing any sleep over what I did. ~ David Farrier

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice
who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal
wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?. ~ Charles Schumer

More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to the margins of mainstream society, banished to a political and social space not unlike Jim Crow, where discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education was perfectly legal, and where they could be denied the right to vote. ~ Michelle Alexander

rapes your wife but perfectly legal to kill a total stranger ~ Clara Salaman

If an ordinary person parks outside another ordinary person's house for a week, it's considered stalking. If, however, that person is considered newsworthy, it's perfectly legal for paparazzi to do the same thing. ~ Vince Vaughn

How subservient to Jesus, or to a humane God Almighty, were the leaders of this country back in the 1840's, when Marx said such a supposedly evil thing about religion? They had made it perfectly legal to own human slaves, and weren't going to led women vote or hold public office, God forbid, for another eighty year. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

It's perfectly legal in this country to change your mind, but when you're a governor you have to admit it. You can't hide behind parliamentary tricks. That's the difference and that's the kind of leader we need in the White House. Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done! ~ Chris Christie

Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of citizenship such as voting and jury service are off-limits. It does not matter whether you have actually spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are branded a felon. Most people branded felons, in fact, are not sentenced to prison. As of 2008, there were approximately 2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under 'community correctional supervision' - i.e., on probation or parole. Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge of inferiority - the felony record - that relegates people for their entire lives, to second-class status. ~ Michelle Alexander

I kind of was beginning to feel like I was being underutilized [as Teen Ambassador to the UN]. I mean, there were a lot more important issues out there for teens that I could have been bringing international attention to than what kids see out their windows. I mean, instead of sitting in the White House press office for three hours after school every Wednesday, or attending International Festival of the Child concerts, I could have been out there alerting the public to the fact that in some countries, it is still perfectly legal for men to take teen brides -- even multiple teen brides! What was that all about?

And what about places like Sierra Leone, where teens and even younger kids routinely get their limbs chopped off as "warnings" against messing with the warring gangs that run groups of diamond traffickers? And hello, what about all those kids in countries with unexploded land mines buried in the fields where they'd like to play soccer, but can't because it's too dangerous?

And how about a problem a little closer to home? How about all the teenagers right here in America who are taking guns to school and blowing people away? Where are they getting these guns, and how come they think shooting people is a viable solution to their problems? And why isn't anybody doing anything to alleviate some of the pressures that might lead someone to think bringing a gun to school is a good thing? How come nobody is teaching people like Kris Parks to be more tolera ~ Meg Cabot

Act as though everything will be perfectly fine - because it will. Life has you and it's not letting you go. ~ Bryant McGill

But, of course, in real life, in the outside world, women do not have equality. They have been judged inferior to men -Adam's rib, his helpmate- with no soul of their own. This has been so since the beginning of Western civilization. Women may have been potent characters in plays by Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, but in classical Greek life, women were not allowed to leave their houses (except to go to the well or on certain feast days). Their names on all legal documents appear as "the daughter of so and so" or "the wife of so and so", They had almost no rights -"She is my goods, my chattels", as Petruchio says of Kate two thousand years later (Taming of the Shrew,3.2,220). And with the advent of Christianity we began the debate as to whether women had souls in their own right or whether they were an "add-on" to their husbands and fathers. What is clear is that the mother of Jesus had to be both a virgin and totally lacking in sexual desire. And she is the model for all women.
By the time we get to Shakespeare's era, a widow would automatically inherit a third of her husband's possessions if he died (but those possessions became her new husband's if she remarried). Women probably had souls (but it was still being debated), and a woman was a monarch. But in neither classical Greece nor Elizabethan England could a woman portray a woman onstage [...] ~ Tina Packer

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. ~ Aldous Huxley

There is a problem on the so-called commercial stage in New York. The price of a ticket is exorbitant, and there are no longer original productions possible, apparently, on the commercial stage. They are all plays that were taken from either England or smaller theaters, off-Broadway theaters, and so on. The one justification there used to be for the commercial theater was that it originated everything we had, and now it originates nothing. But the powers that be seem perfectly content to have it that way. They don't risk anything anymore, and they simply pick off the cream. ~ Arthur Miller

You're always going to have detractors, and you're always going to have people who love you, and that's how it's perfectly balanced and the world spins on. ~ Phil Anselmo

Well, when I think of steroids I think of an image. You have the advantage over someone, which is a form of cheating. I guess it wouldn't be right unless it was legal for everybody. Reason it's not legal for everybody is because it can hurt people seriously. ~ Evander Holyfield

On my death bed, I'm not going to say, 'God I wish I did more movies.' I'm perfectly happy I was present for the ones I did. ~ Mike Myers

And everyone knows I'm a mad scientist. It's amazing what everyone knows, isn't it? Usually what everyone knows is insulting and sort of ableist, because the people who know everything always seem to think of themselves as being perfectly normal. But that's neither here nor there. ~ Mira Grant

We all know that sex is the most interesting topic in the world. We love to talk about sex. There's no juicier gossip than who is sleeping with whom. And we love to read about sex. Check the top 1000 books on Amazon. Most of them have a shirtless guy on the cover, because they're smutty "romance novels" (read: porn for women) about a girl being swept off her feet by one (or more) billionaire alphamales. There are literally tens of thousands of books out there about shirtless billionaire alpha-male vampires who can't wait to mate with you. Lucky you! And women eat that shit up! Men, not so much. We men prefer to watch actual porn. And there's a perfectly good explanation for that. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

As of 2006, there were still fifty-three countries where a husband could not be prosecuted for the rape of his wife. Even in Germany, rape laws were amended only in 1997 to create a legal category of marital rape. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Wretched excess is an unfortunate human trait that turns a perfectly good idea such as Christmas into a frenzy of last-minute shopping. ~ Jon Anderson

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy. ~ Frederic Bastiat

This truth of the gathering together of God's children is in Scripture seen realised in various localities, and in each central locality the Christians resident therein composed but one body: Scripture is perfectly clear on that head. ~ John Nelson Darby

The ACLU is an organization with a long and distinguished history of fighting to protect freedom of speech. On the other hand, in recent years, it has carried its mandate to ever more eccentric and often highly destructive lengths. While is may have been perfectly honorable for Dukakis to belong to the ACLU, it was equally legitimate for Bush to attack him for it. And with what enormous relish he did the job! ~ Newt Gingrich

The Heart is a Harp
The heart is a harp.
If the strings are too loose, the love is flat;
If they're too high strung, the heart can break.
But if the strings are perfectly tuned,
it can speak in the voices of angels
and summon sweet heaven to earth. ~ Beryl Dov

You know how there's that one person who stumbles into your life and you instantly have a connection with them? Someone who's a genuinely good person. Someone you just know you can build a great bond with, and it doesn't have to be in a romantic way either. It can be with someone you have no attraction to whatsoever, you just instantly recognize something in them and they in you. Like in another realm, in another life, you were meant to be together in some way. Whether with a mother, daughter, sibling, best friend, or romantic partner, it's a strong, unexplainable connection between two individuals ~ E.L. Montes

[B]ut once the bureaucrats sink their barbed pens into the lives of Indians, the paper starts flying, a blizzard of legal forms, a waste of ink by the gallon, a correspondence to which there is no end or reason. That's when I began to see what we were becoming, and the years have borne me out: a tribe of file cabinets and triplicates, a tribe of single-space documents, directives, policy. A tribe of pressed trees. A tribe of chicken-scratch that can be scattered by a wind, diminished to ashes by one struck match. ~ Louise Erdrich

[Mikhail] Saakashvili will use all legal and illegal means possible to remain in power. People are being threatened to prevent them from collaborating with the opposition. At the same time, he is terrorizing the business world, which prevents the opposition from gaining any funding. ~ Irakli Okruashvili

I might be more kindly disposed to this ultra-secular notion that whenever bad things happen someone must be held accountable if a curious little halo of blamelessness did not seem to surround those very people who perceive themselves as bordered on every side by agents of wickedness. That is, it seems to be the same folks who are inclined to sue builders who did not perfectly protect them from the depredations of an earthquake who will be the first to claim that their son failed his math test because of attention deficit disorder, and not because he spent the night before at a video arcade instead of studying complex fractions. ~ Lionel Shriver

I'm the prince and you're the princess and rescuing our friend is my job. Just ask Merlin!" Tedros yelled, practically a shriek - "Yes, now you've got it, boy," Merlin spouted, not looking as he trimmed his beard with a thorn. "Sound perfectly female now. ~ Soman Chainani

Terror was not conducive to conjuring perfectly formed sentences."

"I didn't cry easily. It was a badge of honor, of toughness. I was a slip of a girl, a woman with little to offer and nothing to say, but I had my dignity, and tears were undignified."

"Clearly, the battle wasn't over, but paused, and I trembled at what the morrow would bring. No words hung in the wind. The forest creatures had gone deep or fled. Night sounds were muted, the trees silent. Even the leaves spoke in whispers or not at all. Death made the living things hide."

"Those who persecute the hardest usually have the most to hide ~ Amy Harmon

J.B. Bury once followed Pascal in suggesting that the cause of the foundation of the Roman Empire was the length of Cleopatra's nose: had her features not been perfectly proportioned, Mark Antony would not have been entranced; had he not been entranced he would not have allied himself with Egypt against Octavian; had he not made that alliance, the battle of Actium would not have been fought - and so on. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

At that exact moment, Nancy Grace, a CNN legal commentator who combines the nuance of a sledgehammer with the social graces of a harpy.. ~ Charles P. Pierce

Tell me why it is that a toddler will gag over a perfectly wonderful breakfast of ham, eggs, biscuits, juice, and jelly. But then he will enthusiastically drink the dog's water and play in the toilet. Truly, he is his mother's greatest challenge ... ; and her most inexpressible joy. ~ James Dobson

Even when the air seems perfectly still great changes are taking place. ~ Marty Rubin

For, to be woken up at five in the morning by the devotional treacle of Anup Jalota, Hari Om Sharan and other confectioners, all of them simultaneously droning out from several different cassette players; to be relentlessly assaulted for the rest of the day and most of the night by the alternately over-earnest and insolent voices of Kumar Sanu, Alisha Chinoy, Baba Sehgal singing 'Sexy, Sexy, Sexy', and 'Ladki hai kya re baba', 'Sarkaye leyo khatiya' and other hideous songs; to have them insidiously leak into your memory and become moronic refrains running over and over again in your mind; to have your environment polluted and your day destroyed in this way was to know a deepening rage, an impulse to murder, and, finally, a creeping fear at one's own dangerous level of derangement. It was to understand the perfectly sane people you read about in the papers, who suddenly explode into violence one fine day; it was to conceive a lasting hatred for the perpetrators, rich or poor, of these auditory atrocities. (on why he left Varanasi after a few days) ~ Pankaj Mishra

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. ~ J.K. Rowling

When the government is able to collect tax and seize private property without just compensation, it is an indication that the public is ripe for surrender and is consenting to enslavement and legal encroachment. A good and easily quantified indicator of harvest time is the number of public citizens who pay income tax despite an obvious lack of reciprocal or honest service from the government. ~ David Icke

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process. ~ Candace Bushnell

There comes a time when a human being has to either face evil or admit to allowing it. Abortion is legal in the United States, but it should not be celebrated or used as a political tool. Viable babies are human beings. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Even the most beautifully written, perfectly edited and well-designed books will fail if people aren't made aware of them!" ––Linda Radke, President of Five Star Publications, on the importance of public relations and marketing. ~ Linda F. Radke

These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it's so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run. ~ Michael Bloomberg

Well, that won't matter if they turn out to cure seasickness or something, will it?" said Ron, grinning slyly at her. "You know perfectly well I only said that to shut Malfoy up," said Hermione. "As a matter of fact I think he's right. ~ J.K. Rowling

Thorndyke never forgets a likely case. He is sort of a medico-legal camel. He gulps down the raw facts from the newspapers or elsewhere, and then, in his leisure moments, he calmly regurgitates them and has a quiet chew at them. ~ R. Austin Freeman

Where conflicts arise between workers and bosses, between the rights of one class and the interests of the other, the machinery of the law is typically used as a weapon against the workers. Even where the law is contrary to the demands of powerful corporations, the police often act not from principle or legal obligation, but according to the needs of the ruling class. This tendency shouldn't surprise us, if we remember the lengths to which the cops have gone in the defense of White supremacy, even as laws and policies have changed. With class, as with race, it is the status quo that the police act to preserve and the interests of the powerful that they seek to defend, not the rule of law or public safety. The law, in fact, has been a rather weak guide for those who are meant to enforce it. ~ Kristian Williams

The difference between past and present immigration experience is the existence of a defiant anti-assimilationist lobby that encourages legal and illegal aliens to resist adapting to the American way of life. ~ Michelle Malkin

July 14, 1861
Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah: The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more…
I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt…
Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.
The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the ~ Sullivan Ballou

I may be expediting the attainment of an object that will in time be found of great importance to mankind; so much so, that a new era in society will commence from the moment that aerial navigation is familiarly realised ... I feel perfectly confident, however, that this noble art will soon be brought home to man's convenience, and that we shall be able to transport ourselves and our families, and their goods and chattels, more securely by air than by water, and with a velocity of from 20 to 100 miles per hour. ~ George Cayley

Manipulating people is what's so fun about poker. I love that you can just look into someone's eyes and lie - and it's perfectly acceptable. ~ Cheryl Hines

Is true freedom even possible? It certainly is in a momentary sense, as any mature practitioner of meditation knows, and those moments can increase in both number and duration with practice. Therefore, I see no reason why a person couldn't perfectly banish the illusion of the self. However, just the ability to meditate - to rest as consciousness for a few moments prior to the arising of the next thought - can offer a profound relief from mental suffering. ~ Sam Harris

I'm staring at him with my mouth open - again - as he tucks his shirt back in. When he's finished, he takes a step closer to me. I stand perfectly still. His grin dies into a seductive curve of his lips that makes my knees feel funny. I'm completely spellbound and embarrassingly turned on when he bends to whisper in my ear.
"You'd better close those lips before I'm tempted to kiss them and really give you something to be all hot and bothered about." -Cash ~ M. Leighton

There's a legal term for a problem in public space: something that might draw people to an area-say, across train tracks-where they might be caused harm. It's called a 'public nuisance.' I wouldn't mind being called that for my life's work. ~ Vito Acconci

And so he who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. ~ Oscar Wilde

Plutonium is so hazardous that if you had a fully developed nuclear economy with breeder reactors fueled with plutonium, and you managed to contain the plutonium 99.99 percent perfectly, it would still cause somewhere between 140,000 and 500,000 extra lung-cancer fatalities each year. ~ John Gofman

Let her wake as when she close her eyes. That was all Jenny asked for. That was all she begged for on this March night that was perfectly equal to the day, unique in all the season. Let her be the same sweet girl, unburdened by gifts or sorrow. ~ Alice Hoffman

If liberty is to be preserved against the materialistic paternalism of the modern state, there must be something more than courts and legal guarantees; freedom must be written not merely in the constitution but in the people's heart. And it can be written in the heart, we believe, only as a result of the redeeming work of Christ. Other means in the long run will fail. ~ J. Gresham Machen