There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely desperate.
Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) French playwright, actor, director
“Sûreté générale: La liquidation de l’opium,” La Révolution Surréaliste (Jan 1925) [tr. L. Dejardin]
(Source)
Quotations about:
Prohibition
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Senator Smoot is an institute
Not to be bribed with pelf;
He guards our homes from erotic tomes
By reading them all himself.Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“Invocation,” New Yorker (Jan 1930)
(Source)
Nash's poem was about US Senator Reed Smoot (R-Utah) (1862-1941), who had announced an effort in his tariff bill to ban the importation of pornography, leading to headlines of "Smoot Smites Smut." The bill went on to become the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in June 1930.
The period of Prohibition — called the noble experiment — brought on the greatest breakdown of law and order the United States has known until today. I think there is a lesson here. Do not regulate the private morals of people. Do not tell them what they can take or not take. Because if you do, they will become angry and antisocial and they will get what they want from criminals who are able to work in perfect freedom because they have paid off the police.
Gore Vidal (1925-2012) American novelist, dramatist, critic
“The State of the Union”, Esquire (May 1975)
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in the United States is closely connected with this.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) German-American physicist
“My First Impression of the U.S.A.” (1921)
(Source)
Later published as "Some Notes on my American Impressions" in The World As I See It (1949)
