Sabatini on Prohibition

Rafael Sabatini was a novelist particularly well-known for his pirate stories (such as Captain Blood and Sea Hawk). Here is what he once said in an interview when asked to comment on prohibition.

"Being a temperate man, it logically follows that I abhor the very idea of prohibition. In my eyes a teetotaller is quite as intemperate as a drunkard, and he is without a drunkard's sense of decency. For whereas most drunkards are ashamed of their intemperance, most teetotallers glory in theirs, make a boast of it, and ram it down the throats (literally, in the form of ginger ale and such chemical abominations) of their guests and other victims. A drunkard is usually content to be drunk himself. He does not demand that the whole world shall be drunk with him. A teetotallers insists—and when possible enforces this insistence—that everybody else shall abstain as well."