What followed was the government-mandated sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans, some of whom are still living today. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.' And damn good thing, too, because by that time most states had already passed laws permitting compulsory sterilization anyway. In 1927, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes determined that, 'It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.
