Imbeciles Quotes

“The rich and powerful are less likely, all other things being equal, to be arrested, convicted, or imprisoned. The poor are, holding everything else constant, more likely to be incarcerated, institutionalized, and sterilized.”
― Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

“Eugenics argued that positive and negative traits were passed down from generation to generation, and with Mendel’s pea plants, Galton and his followers now had, or so they believed, a scientific basis for saying so.”
― Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

“Holmes was expressing his deepest values, ones impressed on him from an early age. He had been raised to believe he and his peers were part of a hereditary aristocracy. He had learned from his father that they were part of a special caste whose refined physiognomy set them apart, and whose elevated intellect was “congenital and hereditary.”
― Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

“The forces demanding immigration restrictions found a powerful ally in Albert Johnson, the new chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. Johnson, a Republican, represented a Tacoma, Washington, district that was seeing an increasing number of Japanese immigrants. The main reason Johnson had come to Congress, he said, was to bring about “a heavy reduction of immigration by any method possible.”
― Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck

“the collective fears of the Anglo-Saxon upper and middle classes about a changing America. Record levels of immigration were transforming the nation’s ethnic and religious makeup. And”
― Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck