Top 100 Quotes About Parliament
#1. Pakistan's foreign policy should be discussed on the floor of the Parliament, not behind closed doors.
Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri
#2. 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
#3. Devilish men should not be allowed to hold kittens, babies, or bouquets of wildflowers. There ought to be an Act of Parliament.
Tessa Dare
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. Parliament/Congress.
less entertaining than paint drying, but more dangerous than any minefield is.
Steve Merrick
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. In the wake of the Longitude Act, the concept of "discovering the longitude" became a synonym for attempting the impossible.
Dava Sobel
#12. 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
#13. Parliament is the longest running farce in the West End.
Cyril Smith
#14. Parliament is supposed to be serious. It's not a place for jingoistic cheering.
Jeremy Corbyn
#15. 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
#16. We ought not to decide hastily against the words of an Act of Parliament.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. When scores of indicted criminals sit in parliament who could believe in the rule of law ...
Donna Leon
#21. I've been in the Labour Party 50 years and it's 40-odd since I was elected to Parliament
Roy Hattersley
#22. 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
#23. The Iranian revolution of 1906 gave Zoroastrians a seat in the country's parliament.
Gerard Russell
#24. 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
#25. [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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.
Norman Tebbit
#31. Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.
Thomas Carlyle
#32. 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
#33. Canadians can get Parliament working again. Here's how to do that: elect more New Democrats.
Jack Layton
#34. 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
#35. It is conceivable that a party might gain the majority in parliament and claims the government for itself.
Franz Von Papen
#36. 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
#37. We have a Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, both elected by fairer votes - involving proportional representation.
Charles Kennedy
#38. 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
#39. We petitioned to get access to film [Suffragette] at the Houses of Parliament and we whooped with joy when we were allowed in, as this is the first ever commercial film to shoot there.
Sarah Gavron
#40. I owed it to my father that I was elected to Parliament in the first place, but I owed it to my mother that I stuck it out once I got there.
Agnes Macphail
#41. We need female advocates. I'd love to live in a world where there are as many women in parliament as men.
Emma Watson
#42. One consistent thing in an otherwise inconsistent career is that I've always been passionate about parliament.
John Bercow
#43. The real power in Ottawa, as in Washington, is in the executive branch. At the White House, there are daily briefings for reporters. In Ottawa, there is no such daily access. The media doesn't demand it, and as a result, major powerbrokers remain virtually anonymous.
Lawrence Martin
#44. I understand the principles of dissent in parliament.
Jeremy Corbyn
#45. The Russian parliament has condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Vladimir Putin
#46. 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
#47. We could not have parliamentary sovereignty with a European Parliament.
Hugh Gaitskell
#48. My view is the questions in Parliament should be the questions that people out there want asked.
Jeremy Corbyn
#49. In Parliament a fellow MP whispered to him that his trousers were unfastened. "It makes no difference," Winston replied wryly. "The dead bird doesn't leave the nest.
William Manchester
#50. When I'm in office I always keep Members of Parliament talking. If they stopped they might start thinking.
Winston Churchill
#51. There's not enough of us in the Northern Territory in Federal Parliament to squabble.
Nigel Scullion
#52. The country voted to leave the European Union, and it is the duty of the Government and of Parliament to make sure we do just that.
Theresa May
#53. Basically, I have no place in organized politics. By coming to the British Parliament, I've allowed the people to sacrifice me at the top and let go the more effective job I should be doing at the bottom.
Bernadette Devlin
#54. It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.
David Cameron
#55. Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Umberto Eco
#56. Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
Martin Schulz
#57. I know this isn't a widespread view in the Anglo Saxon world, but I believe that much of the reconciliation between more centralized governance and the scope for democracy - democratic control - will be resolved through an even stronger role of the European Parliament.
Mario Monti
#58. I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron, and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister.
Michael Gove
#60. It is, and long has been my opinion, and I have heard honourable members in this House declare it to be theirs - that it is the duty of Parliament equally to protect all the different interests in the country.
Joseph Hume
#61. It has been the greatest privilege of my adult and public life to have served, for 32 years, as the Member of Parliament for our local Highlands and Islands communities.
Charles Kennedy
#62. The Liberal Party will not vote - no Liberal member of Parliament will vote - to take away a woman's right to choose.
Justin Trudeau
#63. A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
Walter Bagehot
#64. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O'Rourke
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. I am a model of positivity compared to the kinds of vitriol, the kinds of destructive criticisms that Labor members of parliament have been making of each other.
Tony Abbott
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.
Franz Grillparzer
#71. The CDU, the great party of the center, is back. It is the biggest party in parliament. We will make what we can of this great result.
Edmund Stoiber
#72. This specter of the female politician, who abandons her family to neglect for the sake of passing bills in parliament, is just as complete an illusion of the masculine brain, as the other specter whom Sydney Smith laid by a joke,
the woman who would forsake an infant for a quadratic equation.
Frances Power Cobbe
#73. I've always thought of my own mind as an unruly parliament, with a feeble leader, with crazy extremist factions.
Rivka Galchen
#74. After the war, prompted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, I entered Parliament so that a priest could speak out for the poor, as canon law at that time still permitted.
Abbe Pierre
#75. 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
#76. There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.
E.A. Bucchianeri
#78. There is a continuous stream of opinions on governance issues expressed daily, not only in our Parliament and in the print media, but also on talk-radio and social media.
Anthony Carmona
#79. The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament, and would be secured by the study of history, law, and tradition.
John Adams
#80. Nobody is sure of his life, property and health when the parliament deliberates.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke
#81. We cannot be happy without being free; we cannot be free without being secure in our property; we cannot be secure in our property if, without our consent, others may, as by right, take it away; taxes imposed on us by Parliament do thus take it away.
John Dickinson
#82. I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.
David Blunkett
#83. There is something utterly nauseating about a system of society which pays a harlot 25 times as much as it pays its prime minister, 250 times as much as it pays its members of Parliament and 500 times as much as it pays some of its ministers of religion.
Harold Wilson
#84. 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
#85. You must not deprive the colonies of their right to make laws for themselves. Parliament should only make laws necessary for the empire as a whole.
Thomas Hutchinson
#86. It is the right of a democratically elected parliament to act in defence of our traditional liberties, and everything should be done to keep it that way.
Jeremy Corbyn
#87. 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
#88. The first law I passed in my cabinet was a law eliminating the double salary for the prime minister and the ministers. I have a salary as member of parliament. I don't want a double salary. So it was a very important decision.
Enrico Letta
#89. There are many members of parliament present here who know as well as I do that, if a man has not already been converted, it will require a great deal more than a letter of appeal to achieve conversion.
Fredrik Bajer
#90. I grew up in a highly political home. My mother was the co-chair of the 300 Group, an organisation whose aim was to get more women MPs into parliament, and she herself stood in the 1987 election, the year before she died.
Noreena Hertz
#91. I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.
Edward Grey
#92. We have used the presence of UNMIK, as well as other European and American agencies to establish a legal framework compatible with the European Union and that is already an advantage. We have seen the positive effects of this and our parliament will continue to go this way.
Ibrahim Rugova
#93. 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
#94. A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.'
That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.
Benjamin Disraeli
#95. Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.
Milan Kundera
#96. 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
#97. No one should be allowed to stand for Parliament without proof that he has taken responsibility for other people.
John Rhys-Davies
#98. 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
#99. Perhaps the only permanent solution would be a more liberal Parliament, but it is beyond my expertise to suggest how we might bring that about.
Ted Chiang
#100. Yesterday, Parliament announced an open forum day. Everyone was given the chance to speak. Or, in other words, no one listened.
Andrey Kurkov
