“When I was a small boy, following the affairs of the House of Commons as closely as I could, I asked my father what a Royal Commission was. He said, "It is a broody hen sitting on a china egg."”

—  Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1964/dec/03/schedule-7-commencement-transitional in the House of Commons (3 December 1964)
1960s

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Michael Foot 54
British politician 1913–2010

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Variant: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

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