Parliamentary Quotes

#1. Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

Susan Sontag

#2. The Remain campaign ... I've never seen a more miserable offering. All they are saying is stay in and we'll do our best to make sure that Britain's Parliamentary independence isn't eroded faster than we can possibly imagine.

Boris Johnson

#3. He can read and write, but he doesn't get what he's read. He's half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I'll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy

Aravind Adiga

#4. Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.

David Blunkett

#5. The parliamentary principle of vesting legislative power in the decision of the majority rejects the authority of the individual and puts a numerical quota of anonymous heads in its place. In doing so it contradicts the aristocratic principle, which is a fundamental law of nature.

Adolf Hitler

#6. Our Parliamentary system has simply failed to meet the challenge of judicial activism.

Stockwell Day

#7. I think politics can no longer be assigned to parliamentary activity and it probably never could be. But politics with a small p and the history of trade union movement really interests me.

Saffron Burrows

#8. A smaller-size party and parliamentary membership does not necessarily equate to lesser demands; if anything, the opposite can be the case.

Charles Kennedy

#9. All is fair in love and war and Parliamentary procedure.

Michael Foot

#10. Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy.

Tom Sharpe

#11. Say, oh well, the Republicans don't like this therefor I shouldn't do it. What kind of a government would that be. We're not a parliamentary system.

John Kasich

#12. It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, that have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.

Wilhelm II

#13. The parliamentary principle of decision by majorities only appears during quite short periods of history, and those are always periods of decadence in nations and States.

Adolf Hitler

#14. The August Decrees were an improvised parliamentary reaction to an emergency situation.

Francois Furet

#15. I think it is important the communities are listened to and that their voice is heard, particularly with local government boundaries more than parliamentary boundaries, because you are talking very much about communities. It can be a very emotive thing.

Nicola Sturgeon

#16. By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature ...

Adolf Hitler

#17. I'm the first Thai prime minister in history that first time win half of parliament seats and second time win 76% of parliamentary seats and I was ousted because too popular.

Thaksin Shinawatra

#18. We could not have parliamentary sovereignty with a European Parliament.

Hugh Gaitskell

#19. I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of a parliamentary day.

Joan Kirner

#20. Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims.

James Q. Wilson

#21. The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence.

Albert Bushnell Hart

#22. We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits, was promised and has earned.

James Buchan

#23. I will not contest my parliamentary seat in a sad election that will not produce a Parliament capable of endorsing a realistic reform agenda for Greece.

Yanis Varoufakis

#24. Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.

Stockwell Day

#25. The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.

H.G.Wells

#26. I have said before I think it would be really good to have a woman in the final two but that's a matter for the parliamentary party.

Nicky Morgan

#27. I might be popular, but that is not sufficient in a parliamentary democracy set-up. One has to assess every chief minister, his success and rating in terms of how far he has succeeded in developing his colleagues.

Sharad Pawar

#28. The U.S. views Morocco as an important friend, and we applaud your political and economic reforms that culminated with the recent parliamentary elections that were widely reported to have been conducted in a fair and open manner.

Donald Evans

#29. As soon as I set foot in the parliamentary Sinai, I ceased to be in touch with the masses.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

#30. Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.

Martin Schulz

#31. The Parliamentary Labour Party is a crucial and very important part of the Labour party, but it is not the entirety of the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn

#32. Which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In

Victor Hugo

#33. No matter how many troops we have in place or how long they stay, we cannot impose a parliamentary democracy there any more than the insurgents can impose a theocracy.

Nick Clooney

#34. Parliamentary committees are becoming more independent, tactics are becoming more sophisticated, and industries that don't want to be bushwhacked by some damaging legislative amendment will have to spend more time and money watching the Hill.

John Ibbitson

#35. The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.

Karl Popper

#36. British Statesman, parliamentary orator and political thinker, Edmund Burke once said, "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." This is true to say the least.

Robert Paulson

#37. One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!

Quentin Bryce

#38. The sorry existence to which this mental tendency was condemned in recent decades by the powerful development of social democracy in Germany may, to a certain extent, be explained by the exclusive domination and long duration of the parliamentary period. A

Rosa Luxemburg

#39. I was elected to the Diet in the same way as at every parliamentary election.

Fritz Sauckel

#40. Well, one thing that has happened is they have had a presidential election in Egypt which has represented progress. Now, we were not happy with everything that happened with the parliamentary elections, and it was not exactly a perfect presidential election in Egypt.

Roger Wicker

#41. To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

Vladimir Lenin

#42. It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.

Tony Benn

#43. The first organised opposition by women to women's suffrage in England dates from 1889, when a number of ladies led by Mrs Ward appealed against the proposed extension of the Parliamentary suffrage to women.

Millicent Fawcett

#44. We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

David Frum

#45. My own view is that if you filled every member of the parliamentary Labour party with a truth drug and lashed them to a polygraph lie detector, very, very few of them would support foundation hospitals.

Frank Dobson

#46. It's perfectly legal in this country to change your mind, but when you're a governor you have to admit it. You can't hide behind parliamentary tricks. That's the difference and that's the kind of leader we need in the White House. Stop the Washington bull and let's get things done!

Chris Christie

#47. Ukraine is going through a difficult time. There is nothing extraordinary of the resignation of the Ukrainian government ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections

Vladimir Putin

#48. Gentl, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England.

Benjamin Disraeli

#49. Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.

Betty Boothroyd

#50. When I entered federal parliament at the end of 2007, I was appointed parliamentary secretary for disabilities.

Bill Shorten

#51. That one never asks a question unless he knows the answer is basic to parliamentary questioning.

John Diefenbaker

#52. I don't actually subscribe to the view that all power corrupts. But absolute power - when secured on the back of massive parliamentary majorities, which don't reflect the balance of political opinion in the country - can corrupt absolutely.

Charles Kennedy

#53. And it's a question of who the parliamentary party thinks is the right person to lead - not just in terms of the negotiations but also the wider 'one nation' agenda that we set out in our manifesto last year and that we were elected on.

Nicky Morgan

#54. By the reduction of the Arabs on the one hand and Jewish immigration in the transition period on the other, we will ensure an absolute Hebrew majority in a parliamentary regime.

Moshe Sharett

#55. To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.

Yann Martel

#56. We believed that growth through Local Government, and perhaps through some special machinery for bringing the wishes and influence of women of all classes to bear on Parliament, other than the Parliamentary vote, was the real line of progress.

Mary Augusta Ward

#57. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible.

Benjamin Disraeli

#58. I am a woman, I am a housewife, I am a government official, I've been twice a government secretary, I've been leader of a parliamentary group, I am an economist.

Josefina Vazquez Mota

#59. If the institutions of parliamentary democracy are worth preserving, the duty to explain them to the people they are meant to serve becomes vitally important.

John Allen Fraser

#60. I don't think Jeremy Corbyn's going to stay, he's going to go. He knows parliamentary party have no faith in him.

Gordon Brown

#61. Little other than a red tape Talking-machine, and unhappy Bag of Parliamentary Eloquence.

Thomas Carlyle

#62. But because it seldom happens people forget that a caucus in the British parliamentary system can remove a leader, including a prime minister.

Chantal Hebert

#63. I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn't believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.

Ed Miliband

#64. I won't say I've never felt in Alex Salmond's shadow, but latterly, when Alex was leader, I didn't. It's more about my awareness of the fact I became First Minister during a parliamentary term. That means you're First Minister, but you haven't been elected in your own right as First Minister.

Nicola Sturgeon

#65. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been awarded the highest rank in the country's military. The decision was praised by everyone from Parliamentary leader Kim Jong Un to opposition leader Kim Jong Un.

Conan O'Brien

#66. I don't like institutions that are beyond normal parliamentary scrutiny. It's an invitation to abuse of power, no matter how noble the intentions.

Stieg Larsson

#67. First of all it has never been the case that I have threatened people with expulsion or that I've threatened to throw people out of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Ron Davies

#68. The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.

Winston Churchill

#69. Anarchism is that political philosophy which advocates the maximization of individual responsibility and the reduction of concentrated power regal, dictatorial, parliamentary: the institutions which go loosely by the name of "government" to a vanishing minimum.

Alex Comfort

#70. We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy-the form of state suited to capitalism-and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities.

Alain Badiou

#71. It is difficult to find another branch of knowledge where a small amount of study produces such great results in increased efficiency in a country where the people rule, as in parliamentary law.

Henry Martyn Robert

#72. Tony Blair - good thing there are not parliamentary elections in this country.

Gwen Ifill

#73. More than six people cannot agree on anything, three is better and one is perfect for a job that one can do. This is why parliamentary bodies all through history, when they accomplished anything, owed it to a few strong men who dominated the rest.

Robert A. Heinlein

#74. The noble Lord (Stanley) was the Prince Rupert to the Parliamentary army
his valour did not always serve his own cause.

Benjamin Disraeli

#75. I think people forget that to be on the A list you first had to go through the original graded Parliamentary Selection Board. I did that and then like everyone else had the further interviews to get onto the A list.

Adam Rickitt

#76. Corbyn was not elected by the parliamentary party but by people who have the luxury of sounding off without the responsibility of answering for it. Corbyn represents the idiocy of direct democracy, and the culture of resentment that takes advantage of it.

Roger Scruton

#77. We can't afford to go down the dead end roads of Parliamentary Socialism or Fascistic Bolshevism.

John Blair

#78. Whatever failures may have come to parliamentary government in countries which have not those traditions, and where it is not a natural growth, that is no proof that parliamentary government has failed.

Stanley Baldwin

#79. I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah ... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term.

Jim Bolger

#80. By July 1933 it was illegal in Germany to belong to any other political party than the Nazis. In November the Nazis staged a parliamentary election in which

Timothy Snyder

#81. Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.

Walter Bagehot

#82. The coalition is a model that has no place in a presidential regime such as in Mexico. It fits in parliamentary models, but Mexico has a presidential regime.

Enrique Pena Nieto

#83. Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

Lord Acton

#84. I know, of course, he said, that bacon for breakfast is an English institution, almost as old as parliamentary government. But still, don't you think we might occasionally have a change, Dorothy?

George Orwell

#85. An American parliamentary system with proportional representation wouldn't immediately or inexorably lead to a flourishing social democracy, but it would at least correct the overrepresentation of an ideological minority and cut down on intentional tactical economic sabotage.

Alex Pareene

#86. Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

John Bright

#87. Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or - what's that strange thing you British play?" "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" "Parliamentary democracy.

Douglas Adams

#88. What value can we place on our parliamentary institutions if constituencies return only tame, docile and subservient members who try to stamp on every form of independent judgement?

Michael Dobbs

#89. The other parties campaign for parliamentary seats, more or less. We campaign for our principles!

Abraham Kuyper

#90. Parliamentary cretinism: that peculiar malady which since 1848 has raged all over the Continent, which holds those infected by it fast in an imaginary world and robs them of all sense, all memory, all understanding of the rude external world.

Karl Marx

#91. It is simply the view, and a view I think shared by most members of the party, that it is very difficult to have a leader that does not command the support of the parliamentary party.

Francis Maude

#92. We can study files for decades, but every so often we are tempted to throw up our hands and declare that history is merely another literary genre: the past is autobiographical fiction pretending to be a parliamentary report.

Julian Barnes

#93. The standing orders of the Parliamentary Party, however, apply to me, apply to every other Member of the Parliamentary Labour Party and they put into a context the way in which those rights to freedom of speech should be exercised.

Ron Davies

#94. There are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don't have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself.

Charles Krauthammer

#95. Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build.

Ferdinand Mount

#96. It is impossible to practice parliamentary politics without having patience, decency, politeness and courtesy.

Khaleda Zia

#97. I think it's perfectly possible for us to stay outside of power politics, or parliamentary politics, and speak about things like the American hegemony in the region or speak about the unjust war on terror that's been brought to our borders.

Fatima Bhutto

#98. Thus was parliamentary democracy finally interred in Germany. Except for the arrests of the Communists and some of the Social Democratic deputies, it was all done quite legally, though accompanied by terror. Parliament

William L. Shirer

#99. The modern world is a meritocracy where you earn your own luck, old school ties count for nothing, and inherited privilege can even lose a guy a clear parliamentary majority.

Kate Reardon

#100. I have said I will not work with the parliamentary party in Strasbourg again but of course I will continue to be a member of UKIP.

Robert Kilroy-Silk