Quotes About Parliament

#1. If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

Thomas B. Macaulay

#2. The suffragettes were women of action. Their motto was 'Deeds not Words,' and the film reflects that with a number of big set pieces, from the smashing of windows in central London to a riot at the Houses of Parliament.

Sarah Gavron

#3. I'm a person who promotes the concept of accountability to a great extent, and I've spoken in the Parliament and reinforced the need for accountability.

Vijay Mallya

#4. I knew quite a lot about politics before I went to Parliament.

Ruth Rendell

#5. 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

#6. The Massachusetts Land Bank, during Colonial times, prospered, and brought prosperity to the community, until it was forcibly suppressed by special act of Parliament.

John Buchanan Robinson

#7. The only politician ever to have entered parliament with honourable intentions, was Guy Fawkes.

Terry Deary

#8. Albert B. Saye, who has searched hardest for debtors among the colonists, estimates that not more than a dozen debtors released from prison by Parliament ever came to Georgia, if indeed that many came.

Kenneth Coleman

#9. When I first came into parliament, there was, on average, a by-election every three months - due not to MPs bailing out, but because of the death rate.

David Blunkett

#10. No stops are ever inserted in Acts of Parliament, or in deeds; but the Courts of law, in construing them, must read them with such stops as will give effect to the whole.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#11. I trust Canadians' capacity to determine who will sit in their Parliament.

Justin Trudeau

#12. Not until he acquires European manners does the American anarchist become the gentleman who assures you that people cannot be mademoral by Act of Parliament (the truth being that it is only by Acts of Parliament that men in large communities can be made moral, even when they want to).

George Bernard Shaw

#13. 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

#14. We are a constitutional monarchy. I don't order laws, I propose them. Article 35 of our constitution states that the king can only refuse a law of parliament once, then he has to sign it - if the same law is then supported by a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

#15. Parliament has become so undermined it is almost unable to do the job that people expect of it. A glaring example is the budget bill, where there was no thoughtful debate or scrutiny of the legislation.

Sheila Fraser

#16. I understand the damage the expenses crisis has done to Parliament, and the paramount importance of restoring trust in our politics.

George Osborne

#17. Pakistan has not recognized Israel ... any such decision would be taken in supreme national interests after due consultation of the parliament.

Shaukat Aziz

#18. In Britain the government has to come down in front of Parliament every day to explain its actions, but here the President never answers directly to Congress.

Bella Abzug

#19. 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

#20. After 30 years in Brussels, I can tell you: The relationship between the Commission and the Parliament has probably never been as good as it is now.

Jean-Claude Juncker

#21. The supremacy of Parliament and the embedding of property rights in Common Law put political power in the hands of men anxious to exploit the new economic opportunities and provided the framework for a judicial system to protect and encourage productive economic activity

Douglass North

#22. [To the South African parliament:] I do not know why we equate - and with the examples before us - a white skin with civilization.

Helen Suzman

#23. It is not the Government, the members of Parliament to whom the ultimate decision belongs, it is up to you to go forward sure of your sacred right of free opinion, sure of your patriotism.

John Amery

#24. I question why the Department continued to watch the costs escalate without informing Parliament and without considering alternatives.

Sheila Fraser

#25. The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection.

Elihu Root

#26. A Parliament is that to the Commonwealth which the soul is to the body. It behoves us therefore to keep the facility of that soul from distemper.

John Pym

#27. 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

#28. I had this terrible nightmare; I dreamt I was a politician and they were dragging me off to parliament

Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

#29. The parliament passes some acts or decree which may have the most devastating consequences, yet nobody bears the responsibility for it. Nobody can be called to account." -

Michael Walsh-McLaughlin

#30. American missionaries have free rein in Uganda. They can go anywhere they please - schools, hospitals, parliament.

Roger Ross Williams

#31. The reason why I'm in Parliament is not really to see my colleagues win power; it is to see us at last in a position where we can give it up.

Michael Gove

#32. It is true that I entered parliament at the age of 23, and have now been representing the people of my constituency for over twenty years.

Charles Kennedy

#33. That a Parliament, especially a Parliament with Newspaper Reporters firmly established in it, is an entity which by its very nature cannot do work, but can do talk only.

Thomas Carlyle

#34. I've always been really uninterested in politicians and the acts of the Houses of Parliament, or government as an idea. But I'm interested in politics in that I'm a member of the world, and I have strong feelings of right and wrong, but I can't get into the ins and outs of it.

Ewan McGregor

#35. Indeed I did not stand as a beggar at the Parliament door, for I never was at the Parliament-House, nor stood I ever at the door as I do know or can remember; not as a petitioner I am sure.

Margaret Cavendish

#36. If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people.

Stephen Harper

#37. If Parliament may take from me one shilling in the pound, what security have I for the other nineteen?

Richard Henry Lee

#38. But please remember, that in 1991 in the Seym [lower chamber of polish parliament] I didn't demand the abolishment of Special Economic Zones. I demanded the creation of a single Special Economic Zone - which would encompass the whole country!

Janusz Korwin-Mikke

#39. I'm fully aware that my vision of a European bicameral parliament can't be implemented tomorrow. I'm also not an integration fanatic.

Martin Schulz

#40. Can one serve God and one's nation in parliament?

William Wilberforce

#41. I felt that if we, as the Met, were not intervening once one person starts digging up Parliament Square, then someone else is going to join in and you have a spiral.

Michael Todd

#42. Several countries have also legally reserved seats in parliament specifically for women to ensure that they are represented.

Stephen Orvis

#43. Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.

Kenneth Rexroth

#44. 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

#45. I am a man of parliament, a man of the people. I am not a representative of the executives.

Martin Schulz

#46. 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

#47. We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.

Robert Louis Stevenson

#48. Parliament is more than procedure - it is the custodian of the nation's freedom.

John Diefenbaker

#49. Severability is an important concept in the context of the relations between this Court and Parliament; like 'reading down', it is an instrument of judicial restraint which reduces the danger of producing an overbroad judicial reaction to overbroad legislation.

Albie Sachs

#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. One minute I was a clapped-out, two-guinea, legal-aid lawyer, and the next minute I was in parliament.

David Lange

#52. A group of owls is called a parliament, wisdom, or study.

Kimberley Payne

#53. I think we can get respect for Parliament back providing governments and oppositions are frank.

John Major

#54. It seems like cloud cuckoo land. If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the Pound Sterling - no! We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed upon us.

Margaret Thatcher

#55. At times I wonder whether or not your role as a member of Parliament ... may in fact inhibit a relationship developing.

Lara Giddings

#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. 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

#58. My function in life is not to be a politician in Parliament: it is to get something done.

Bernadette Devlin

#59. We will have to embark on a change so radical, a revolution so quiet and yet so total, that it will go far beyond the programme for a parliament

Edward Heath

#60. 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

#61. I have advocated postal reform for many years. The parliament said it was an absurd argument. The people have said it was the right thing,

Junichiro Koizumi

#62. We should no longer seek to have Budget surplus by end of Parliament. We should avoid tax rises.

Theresa May

#63. [1768] The Billeting Act, which required the colonists to lodge and feed the British troops quartered among them, added fuel to the flames. In 1768 the New York legislature refused to comply, and Parliament suspended its legislative functions.

E. Benjamin Andrews

#64. The first years in Parliament I did nothing - nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.

William Wilberforce

#65. The government can access these funds but only following approval by the parliament to support our budget requirements and investments in infrastructure development, education, public health, and so on.

Jose Ramos-Horta

#66. In 1770, a British law was proposed to Parliament granting grounds for annulment if a bride used cosmetics prior to her wedding day.
- Marjorie Dorfman, The History of Make-up

Julie Klassen

#67. One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term 'reform' is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various level of the government, in work practices and procedures.

Narendra Modi

#68. The kind of people I myself represent in parliament; salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on, these are, in a political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganised and unselfconscious.

Robert Menzies

#69. 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

#70. You must build your House of Parliament on the river: so ... that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.

Duke Of Wellington

#71. You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.

Arthur Scargill

#72. 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

#73. I believe in peace-building in any kind of platform, be it a political platform like Parliament or negotiations like peace-building negotiations.

Safak Pavey

#74. I felt really compromised. I think legal marriage is unnecessary and I would not have formalised the relationship [with husband Peter Davis] except for going into Parliament. I have always railed against it privately.

Helen Clark

#75. People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country.

William III Of England

#76. 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

#77. The public treasure has been duly applied to the uses to which it was appropriated by Parliament, and regular accounts have been annually laid before Parliament, of every article of expense.

Robert Walpole

#78. 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

#79. People seem to think that if a man is a Member of Parliament he may do what he pleases. ... Being in Parliament used to be something when I was young, but it won't make a make a gentleman now-a-days. It seems to me that none but brewers, and tallow-chandlers, and lawyers go into Parliament now.

Anthony Trollope

#80. 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

#81. I am seeking every day to restore faith in Parliament - to ensure we have a House of Commons which is representative, effective and reconnected to the people we serve.

John Bercow

#82. As I became Speaker in 1986, I made a point of setting up a public information office to respond to requests and provide information about Parliament and how it functions.

John Allen Fraser

#83. The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#84. [The] prevailing reason at this time is, that the Act of Parliament is against the Magna Charta, and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.

Thomas Hutchinson

#85. The laws that stopped blacks from voting were the worst, because they prevented blacks from voting someone into parliament who could change the other laws. Even though the blacks were the majority of the population, they were still not getting a say.

Nelson Mandela

#86. Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically - while simulating a triumphant march forward - than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?

Alexander Herzen

#87. 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

#88. We need a global parliament, a global government and possibly a global ministry for security.

Lech Walesa

#89. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can be elected to the parliament in a democratic election.

Adam Michnik

#90. Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.

Jose Mujica

#91. 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

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. I am resigning my post in the parliament. I have done this because I think it is the right thing to do.

Sonia Gandhi

#95. When you come to Parliament on your first day, you wonder how you ever got here. After that, you wonder how the other 263 members got here.

John Diefenbaker

#96. I foresee a Liberal vote so massive and the number of Liberal MPs so great that we shall hold the initiative in the new Parliament.

David Steel

#97. England is governed not by logic but by parliament.

Benjamin Disraeli

#98. A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

Oscar Wilde

#99. We are in a democracy, and I think for all issues, whatever matters that the opposition may have apprehension on, there is a forum, and it is called Parliament.

Pallam Raju

#100. The absence of political personalities in the government will help rather than hinder a solid base of support for the government in parliament and in the political parties because it will remove one ground for disagreement.

Mario Monti