Top 100 Parliament's Quotes
#1. His Parliament's on fire and his hands are up.
Lana Del Rey
#2. I said in my inaugural address that I am not the Council's secretary, nor am I the Parliament's lackey. That can sometimes lead to conflicts, which are defused through dialogue.
Jean-Claude Juncker
#3. I know I'm not a showy politician ... I don't go drinking in parliament's bars. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, I just get on with the job in front of me and you can judge me by my record.
Theresa May
#4. This open resistance to [Parliament's] authority can only have found place among the lower and more ignorant of the people.
Henry Seymour Conway
#5. I don't tour the TV studios. I don't gossip over lunch. I don't drink in Parliament's bars. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve. I just get on with the job in front of me.
Theresa May
#6. What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any.
Bernard Bailyn
#7. I ride my bike past the Danish Parliament, and it's very accessible - there's really no security!
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
#8. One moment it's a cathedral, at another time there is no words to describe it when it ceases, for short periods of time, to have any regard for the proprieties that constitute not only Parliament, but its tradition. I've seen it in all its greatness. I have inwardly wept over it when it is degraded.
John Diefenbaker
#9. My task, as a member of this parliament and a 30-year member of the Australian Labor Party, as its former leader, as its former foreign minister and its former prime minister, is to now throw my every effort in securing Julia Gillard's re-election as Labor prime minister at the next election.
Kevin Rudd
#10. But the nation's business must go forward, and this is how: an act to give Wales members of Parliament, and make English the language of the law courts, and to cut from under them the powers of the lords of the Welsh marches.
Hilary Mantel
#11. A group of owls is called a parliament, wisdom, or study.
Kimberley Payne
#12. The issue here is not gun control. And it's not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark.
Sheila Fraser
#13. So although the campaign for women's votes continued and the Bill was repeatedly brought back to Parliament, for nearly a generation most women held back from direct action and unladylike encroachment on the established power of men.
Neil MacGregor
#14. The English king's power was curbed by Parliament, though that wasn't always a good thing, as politicians often behave no better than monarchs - there are just more of them.
Karen Maitland
#15. We are demonstrating for services for all the people and not just services for money. It's very important that this message goes to the European Parliament today.
John Monks
#16. The day must come when the nation's whole scale of living must be reduced. If that day comes,Parliament must lay the burden equally on all classes.
Lord Randolph Churchill
#17. I stood for parliament with the amazing support and help of my ex-husband, but it's not something that was handed to me like a peerage. I worked hard and was elected. So my achievements, such as they are, are my own.
Louise Mensch
#18. I have said consistently in my 16-and-a-half years in the parliament, I have always supported the party room's decision and the party room is the ultimate authority on these matters. I don't expect that to change.
Nick Minchin
#19. My plays are for the kind of black people who relate to funk music, to Parliament-Funkadelic. When those guys get out of a spaceship - the idea that black people are from outer space, there's a poetic truth to that. We are this vast people.
Suzan-Lori Parks
#20. I look forward to continuing the debate about Britain's future - in Parliament and across the country.
Theresa May
#21. My personal view is always I'm in favour of anything that gives parliament a greater say. That's after all what we were elected for.
Iain Duncan Smith
#22. We will never vote for the renewal of Trident; that's a decision which will fall to be made in the next Westminster parliament. We will never vote for that.
Nicola Sturgeon
#23. Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.
Thomas Carlyle
#24. Each Act of Parliament intended to address harassment and discrimination has faced objections on the basis of 'you'll never be able to prove ... ' and 'there's too much legislation already ... '. In no case has this line of reasoning ever been sustained.
Tim Field
#25. Well it's not a matter for me to say what Llew Smith can or cannot do, he's an elected Member of Parliament.
Ron Davies
#26. It's not just parliament that requires radical modernisation. It's our democratic processes.
David Blunkett
#27. It's a national failing to think of politics as something that goes on in Parliament. It isn't; it's something that goes on inside us.
Brian Aldiss
#28. A prickle of porcupines, a cackle of hyenas, a pounce of cats, a slither of snakes. But it's a nest of vipers, a quiver of cobras, and a rhumba of rattlesnakes. They also have a parliament of owls and a congress of baboons, which I find insulting to baboons myself.
Abigail Roux
#29. She studied his clothes, his top hat. "And you've just come from Parliament? How are you finding that?"
"It's much like piracy. You tell your enemies that if they don't fall in line, you'll leave them to die.
Meljean Brook
#30. [T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it's power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of theirvirtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!
Thomas Jefferson
#31. I think it's absolutely fascinating that in Berlin the parliament can discuss actively the role of their soldiers in Afghanistan because is it still possible, literally, for a German soldier to take up arms.
Stephen Daldry
#32. A similar move is underway in the British Parliament. Earlier this month, more than 30 religious leaders and scholars wrote Secretary of State John Kerry asking for a meeting to discuss what's happening to Christians and other minorities. Nina Shea organized the effort.
Tom Gjelten
#33. [After her election to the British Parliament and being welcomed to 'the most exclusive men's club in Europe':] It won't be exclusive long. When I came in, I left the door wide open!
Nancy Astor
#34. ****your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If those two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good. President Lyndon Johnson to the Greek ambassador in Washington (1964)
Richard Clogg
#35. I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater," said [Sherlock] Holmes. "I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP's, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament.
Dan Simmons
#36. It's not just a question of numbers. There will be more women (in parliament) who are conscious of women's rights ... There will also be women who are not committed to equality.
Hanan Ashrawi
#37. When you first come into Parliament, it's a daunting place because you feel you've so much to learn. Once you've been re-elected, you feel much more confident. It just gives you a bit of a boost.
Theresa May
#38. In the 70s, GEORGE CLINTON and PARLIAMENT FUNKADELIC and EARTH WIND & FIRE, we were very serious about our music and who we were trying to touch. I think that's why the music of the 70s has not died - because it has a rejuvenating quality to it.
Maurice White
#39. The Leader of the Opposition's constitutional obligation - the obligation to Parliament - it's the reason we did the merger! - is to make sure Canadians have an alternative for government.
Stephen Harper
#40. It is in that English Parliament the chains for Ireland are forged, and any Irish patriot who goes into that forge to free Ireland will soon find himself welded into the agency of his country's subjection to England.
Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa
#41. I'm not sure I make old bones in parliament. It's an amazing experience to have had but I can't see myself being Mother of the House.
Louise Mensch
#42. I am rather of the opinion that in England a gentleman's dreams are his own private concern. I fancy there is a law in that effect and, if there is not, why, Parliament should certainly be made to pass one immediately! It ill becomes another man to invite himself into them.
Susanna Clarke
#43. Here's some simple advice: Always be yourself. Never take yourself to seriously. And beware of advice from experts, pigs, and members of Parliament.
Jim Henson
#44. Political union means transferring the prerogatives of national legislatures to the European parliament, which would then decide how to structure Europe's fiscal, banking, and monetary union.
Barry Eichengreen
#45. The most powerful presentations were based on legal precedents, especially Calvin's Case (1608), which, it was claimed, proved on the authority of Coke and Bacon that subjects of the King are by no means necessarily subjects of Parliament.
Bernard Bailyn
#47. There's going to be a new code on Parliament Hill: bend the rules, you will be punished; break the law, you will be charged; abuse the public trust, you will go to prison,
Stephen Harper
#48. Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.
David Lange
#49. Parliament is more than procedure - it is the custodian of the nation's freedom.
John Diefenbaker
#50. And we've also had now the speaker of the Parliament in Iraq using blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, saying the Jews and sons of Jews are the problem of all the violence that's in Iraq.
Jan Schakowsky
#51. I didn't much like being in Parliament physically. I found it a bit depressing. It's very dark and heavy. I like being out and about.
Geoff Mulgan
#52. We'll support the government on issues if it's essential to the country but our primary responsibility is not to prop up the government, our responsibility is to provide an opposition and an alternative government for Parliament and for Canadians.
Stephen Harper
#53. Chronicling future appeasing Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain's rise to Parliament from first-generation commercial interests rather than the aristocracy, the author diagnoses even then that he had no center outside himself.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#54. I think the state opening of Parliament is an incredibly important occasion, and broadly speaking, the way in which it's done is an invaluable tradition.
John Bercow
#55. The Iranian revolution of 1906 gave Zoroastrians a seat in the country's parliament.
Gerard Russell
#56. Industry cannot flow unless cpaital is confident, and capital will not be confident as long as it fears that Parliament will meddle with it and walk off with its profits.
Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess Of Salisbury
#57. I've been in the Labour Party 50 years and it's 40-odd since I was elected to Parliament
Roy Hattersley
#58. When scores of indicted criminals sit in parliament who could believe in the rule of law ...
Donna Leon
#59. I'd say about Malcolm Fraser, as he said about himself, is that he was always, from the day he entered Parliament in 1955 until the day he died today, was a Liberal.
George Brandis
#60. What is Parliament for if it is not to be a means to make ministers accountable for the services for which they are responsible.
Michael Howard
#61. May it please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here.
William Lenthall
#62. We ought not to decide hastily against the words of an Act of Parliament.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#63. The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at crossroads.
Flann O'Brien
#64. Parliament is supposed to be serious. It's not a place for jingoistic cheering.
Jeremy Corbyn
#65. Parliament is the longest running farce in the West End.
Cyril Smith
#66. But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.
Rory Bremner
#67. In the wake of the Longitude Act, the concept of "discovering the longitude" became a synonym for attempting the impossible.
Dava Sobel
#68. When I am in the Scottish Parliament chamber, I often feel the need to sit for the entire debate. It's only courteous to listen to what everyone has to say, although I often find myself desperate to say something but too scared to stand up in case I regret it.
Margo MacDonald
#69. When it comes to getting more women into parliament, politicians have at least started to take active measures. The British Labour Party introduced all-female shortlists in 1997.
Noreena Hertz
#70. Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.
James Russell Lowell
#71. The situation in Greece just goes from bad to worse. We've now got a situation where there was the big suicide a few weeks ago, where a 77-year-old man shot himself in the head outside the Greek Parliament. That was the public face of what's gone wrong.
Nigel Farage
#72. Parliament/Congress.
less entertaining than paint drying, but more dangerous than any minefield is.
Steve Merrick
#73. The only contry in the world where there's a majority of women in parliament is Rwanda. Rwanda. That's when women get power, real power - if the men are either dead or in prison.
A. L. Kennedy
#74. The responsibility of a minister is to step aside when there is a criminal investigation of the department. That protects the propriety of Parliament and of responsible government.
Jack Layton
#75. Devilish men should not be allowed to hold kittens, babies, or bouquets of wildflowers. There ought to be an Act of Parliament.
Tessa Dare
#76. I'm confident as a supporter of same sex marriage, I'm confident that there'll be a yes vote in that plebiscite, and that the parliament will then move very swiftly to implement the will of the people.
George Brandis
#77. Pakistan's foreign policy should be discussed on the floor of the Parliament, not behind closed doors.
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
#78. It is conceivable that a party might gain the majority in parliament and claims the government for itself.
Franz Von Papen
#79. I want you to know what I have told Australia's Parliament in Canberra - what I told General Petraeus in Kabul - what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week. Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States.
Julia Gillard
#80. He may be incensed, said Dizzy. I've never doubted the old parson's faith, but it has no place in politics. Good God, just imagine if each man allowed himself to be swayed by moral compunctions; we'd never get a damned thing accomplished in Parliament.
Carol K. Carr
#81. There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.
Theresa May
#82. The British Parliament, in its famed Longitude Act of 1714, set the highest bounty of all, naming a prize equal to a king's ransom (several million dollars in today's currency) for a "Practicable and Useful" means of determining longitude.
Dava Sobel
#83. Some members of both Houses have, it is true, been removed from their employments under the Crown; but were they ever told, either by me or by any other of his majesty's servants, that it was for opposing the measures of the administration in Parliament?
Robert Walpole
#84. Quite apart from the problem of the vote, it's bad for the image of Parliament that people take the trouble to come up and are not allowed to see their MP
Vince Cable
#85. The Liberal Party will not vote - no Liberal member of Parliament will vote - to take away a woman's right to choose.
Justin Trudeau
#86. There's not enough of us in the Northern Territory in Federal Parliament to squabble.
Nigel Scullion
#87. There are hundreds of Canadian communities that have given more thought to hiring their rink manager than they have to electing their member of Parliament.
Preston Manning
#88. We have a Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, both elected by fairer votes - involving proportional representation.
Charles Kennedy
#89. I was the deputy Chairman of the Democratic Union of the Pacific, and we started at 8 I think and I was called to the telephone and to be told there's a coup, the government has been overthrown - it was round about 9, 10 when the Parliament sat they had done then.
Kamisese Mara
#90. In fact, in Parliament, I pointed out that Australians on average incomes would move into the second highest tax bracket in the next couple of years. That is going to slow down the Australian economy. It's bad for households.
Joe Hockey
#91. Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it's how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.
Paulo Coelho
#92. Canadians can get Parliament working again. Here's how to do that: elect more New Democrats.
Jack Layton
#93. When the Canadian confederation took place in 1867, a lot of people in Quebec said, 'Could we have a referendum?' They said, 'Oh, no. In the British tradition, the Parliament can do anything, excluding changing a man into a woman, and, therefore, no referendum' - and that was that.
Jacques Parizeau
#94. Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
Thomas Carlyle
#95. Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.
Norman Tebbit
#96. I won't have you electioneering on my doorstep. Every time you get in trouble in Parliament you run over here with your shirttail hanging out.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#97. MEASURED IN THE BLOOD spilt in leadership challenges or the bile spewed daily in parliament, the developed world's most stable economy has produced the most volatile and petty politics.
Nick Bryant
#98. Notwithstanding all the care and anxiety of the persons who frame Acts of Parliament to guard against every event, it frequently turns out that certain cases were not foreseen.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#99. I've heard there are modern Scots clamoring for independence even in the twenty-first century. They even have their own parliament now - although to me that's kind of like Texas having its own president.
N. Gemini Sasson
#100. [To Parliament, when it urged her to marry and settle the succession:] You attend to your own duties and I'll perform mine.
Elizabeth I
