Quote
By William Howard Taft
The world is not going to be saved by legislation, and it is not going to be injured by an occasional two years of respite from the panacea and magic that many modern schools of politicians seem to think are to be found in the words: "Be it enacted."
- Source
- The Presidency, Its Duties, Its Powers, Its Opportunities and Its Limitations: Three Lectures, 1916 · p. 10 (inferred)
- Read at
- Internet Archive (Cornell University Library scan of the 1916 first edition, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons)
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About this quote
From The Presidency: Its Duties, Its Powers, Its Opportunities and Its Limitations (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916), the text of Taft's lectures at the University of Virginia in January 1915. He is defending the American system in which Congress is forced to rest from legislating for a stretch between sessions, and says that rest is "not bad." The popular version is only the first half of this sentence.