Quotes about parliament
page 5

“We are bound also to consider what are those taxes, the removal of which will give more scope to commercial enterprise, and occasion an increased demand for labour. ... let the House remember that the principle on which we have gone, and gone advisedly, is the absolute repeal of taxation in many cases. ... We do hope that the direct and instant effect will be increased consumption of many articles now subject to duty, invigorating the industry and extending the commercial enterprise of the country through other channels, and supplying the void we cannot hope to fill up by direct taxation. ... We have taken this course after careful consideration, and we recommend this plan from a deliberate conviction that if sanctioned by Parliament it will conduce to the extension of industry, to the encouragement of enterprise, and that the result of that extension of industry and encouragement of enterprise will be the benefit of all classes of the community, whether they are directly or indirectly connected with commerce, manufactures, or agriculture.”

Robert Peel (1788–1850) British Conservative statesman

Budget speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1845/feb/14/financial-statement-the-budget in the House of Commons (14 February 1845) Prime Minister

Communication, Hope, Housing, Country

“I have for years attempted to maintain the exclusion of Roman Catholics from Parliament, and the high offices of the State. I do not think it was an unnatural or unreasonable struggle. I resign it in consequence of the conviction that it can no longer be advantageously maintained. I yield therefore to a moral necessity which I cannot control; unwilling to push resistance to a point which might endanger the establishments that I wish to defend.”

Robert Peel (1788–1850) British Conservative statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (5 March 1829) introducing the Bill for Catholic Emancipation, quoted in The Parliamentary Debates, New Series: Vol. XX (1829), column 730
Home Secretary

Thinking

“While the so-called European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to recognise a man in the street as President of Venezuela, the African Union voted unanimously to endorse the presidency of Maduro and Venezuelan sovereignty. Just think about that...”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1091014942919139328 (31 January 2019)

Thinking

“The fourth phase of violence starting May 5 saw attacks on Hindu neighbourhoods by mischief mongers with the intent of provoking a backlash. The idea was to influence the scheduled discussion on Gujarat in the concluding session of Rajya Sabha the next day. These stage-managed riots were aimed at misleading the Parliament, as well as the outside world, to believe that the situation in Gujarat was grim and to build a national hysteria around Narendra Modi in order to browbeat Prime Minister Vajpayee into sacking Modi.”

Madhu Kishwar (1959) Indian activist and writer

Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, 2014

World, Idea

“The people will rise, and at last royalty will have arrayed against it philosophy, which is intelligence, Parliament, which is the middle class, and the mob, which is the people; in other words, the lever with which Archimedes can raise the world.”

Alessandro Cagliostro (1743–1795) Italian occultist

Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)

World, Intelligence, People

“Crimea is our land… Even if someone decides to argue with me, the dispute will immediately come to a dead-end… Democracy is the power of the people. How is it exercised, this power of the people? It is exercised through referendums, elections and so on. People came to a referendum in Crimea and voted for independence, first, and then for being part of Russia…. Let me remind you for the hundredth time that there was no referendum in Kosovo, only the parliament voted for independence, that was all. Everyone who wanted to support and destroy the former Yugoslavia said: well, thank God, we are fine with that… we proceed based on the will expressed by the people who live on that territory.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Cooperation, Terrorism, UK & USA, President Trump, Resolving Conflict, Defense, Crimea, The Media, Nuclear Weapons Policy: 15th Plenary Session (18 October 2018)

Democracy, God, Time, Dead

“Impressed as we are with a deep sense of the excellence of our Constitution, as it exists in theory, we rejoice that we are not, like our brothers in France, reduced to the hard necessity of tearing up inveterate abuse by the roots, even where utility was so intermixed as to admit of separation. Ours is an easier and a less unpleasing task; to remove with a steady and a temperate resolution the abuses which the lapse of many years, inattention and supineness in the great body of the people, and unremitting vigilance in their rulers to invade and plunder them of their rights, have suffered to overgrow and to deform that beautiful system of government so admirably suited to our situation, our habits and our wishes. We have not to innovate but to restore. The just prerogatives of our monarch we respect and will maintain. The constitutional powers of the peers of the realms we wish not to invade. We know that in the exercise of both, abuses have grown up; but we also know that those abuses will be at once corrected, so as never again to recur, by restoring to us the people what we for ourselves demand as our right, our due weight and influence in that estate which is our property, the representation of the people in parliament.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Address of the Volunteers assembled at Belfast to the people of Ireland (14 July 1792), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobold Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume I: Tone's career in Ireland to June 1795 (1998), p. 218

Beauty, Suffering, People, Sense

“WE HAVE NO NATIONAL GOVERNMENT; we are ruled by Englishmen, and the servants of Englishmen, whose object is the interest of another country, whose instrument is corruption, and whose strength is the weakness of Ireland; and these men have the whole of the power and patronage of the country as means to seduce and subdue the honesty and the spirit of her representatives in the legislature. Such an extrinsic power, acting with uniform force in a direction too frequently opposite to the true line of our obvious interests, can be resisted with effect solely by unanimity, decision and spirit in the people; qualities which may be exerted most legally, constitutionally and efficaciously, by that great measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of Ireland, AN EQUAL REPRESENTATION OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Declaration and resolutions of the Society of United Irishmen of Belfast (18 October 1791), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobold Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume I: Tone's career in Ireland to June 1795 (1998), p. 140

Freedom, Country, People, Decision

“There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot, to enslave all America. This, however, must be done by degrees. The first step that is intended, seems to be an entire subversion of the whole system of our fathers, by the introduction of the canon and feudal law into America. The canon and feudal systems, though greatly mutilated in England, are not yet destroyed. Like the temples and palaces in which the great contrivers of them once worshipped and inhabited, they exist in ruins; and much of the domineering spirit of them still remains. The designs and labors of a certain society, to introduce the former of them into America, have been well exposed to the public by a writer of great abilities; and the further attempts to the same purpose, that may be made by that society, or by the ministry or parliament, I leave to the conjectures of the thoughtful.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Law

“Let us banish for ever from our minds, my countrymen, all such unworthy ideas of the king, his ministry, and parliament. Let us not suppose that all are become luxurious, effeminate, and unreasonable, on the other side the water, as many designing persons would insinuate. Let us presume, what is in fact true, that the spirit of liberty is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation, though a few individuals may be corrupted.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Idea, Water, Personality

“It is not possible, and it never will be possible, to organize all the beings occupying space into one immense confederacy. This would be ideal, but from the inexorable nature of things it can never be. The denizens of the sea depths can not correlate with the inhabitants of the clouds. The lion can not fraternize with the lamb, nor the hawk with the sparrow. The natures of beings have been evolved thru war, and they are in large part irredeemably antagonistic. But the approximation, if honest, may be more successful than is supposed, and may include many species not human. The bird may contribute his song and plumage, the sheep his fleece, the horse, the ox, the elephant, and the camel their strength or speed, the cow and the fowl their secretions, the dog his fidelity, and man his art. The ultimate and ideal aggregation of the living universe will not be a pan-American union nor a Euro-American league, nor even an aggregation whose spirit is embodied in a parliament of man, but the widest and most consummate possible Confederation of the Consciousnesses.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, pp. 161–163

Success, War, Dogs, Speed

“It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men — and such are not wanting in the collectivist party — can remain partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons history has given them — in France, in England, in Germany, or in the United States.”

Peter Kropotkin book The Conquest of Bread

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 13 : The Collectivist Wages System

Intelligence, History, Men

“I have tried to define democracy, and worked out five criteria. If you meet a powerful person, ask them five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interest do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How could we get rid of you?Because if you can’t get rid of the people who have power over you they don’t have to listen to you. The reason the members of parliament and prime ministers, with all their defects, have to listen is because the Day of Judgement comes on polling day, whereas the bankers, the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the Pope, the mullahs, the rabbis, don’t have to listen — because they are there. Some of them say they’re there because God gave them power, others say they are following the inescapable conclusions of a market-related society. But whatever justification they give they aren’t accountable and can’t be removed — and I will not be governed by people I can’t get rid of. For that very reason, people who do have power don’t like democracy because it will undermine the security they think they have.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Tony Benn interview “Hope is the key, Share International” https://share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/jan_03.htm#benn (January 2003) 2000s

Democracy, God, Question, Personality

“The issues raised in the historic conflict between Charles I, resting his claim to govern Britain on the divine right of kings, and Parliament - representing, however imperfectly, a demand for the wider sharing of power - concerned the use and abuse of state power, the right of the governed to a say in their government, and the nature of political freedom. The Levellers grew out of this conflict. They represented the aspirations of working people who suffered under the persecution of kings, landowners and the priestly class, and they spoke for those who experienced the hardships of poverty and deprivation. They developed and campaigned, first with Cromwell and then against him, for a political and constitutional settlement of the civil war which would embody principles of political freedom, anticipating by a century and a half the ideas of the American and French revolutions.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

' The Levellers and the Tradition of Dissent https://web.archive.org/web/20081214151939/https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/civil_war_revolution/benn_levellers_01.shtml' (1 June 2001) 2000s

Freedom, War, People, Suffering

“If Parliament, public and press have now braced themselves to accept the plain and obvious truth that Cabinet discussions are interesting, vigorous and sometimes revolve around alternative policies, why should even the disclosure of an outline of the points at issue—while these discussions are in progress—be guarded against so relentlessly and so ineffectively from any risk of publicity? … Secrecy in decision-making does not occur by accident or default. It is because knowledge is power, and no government willingly gives up power to the Commons, the public, or anyone else. Open government would disclose more about the processes of decision-making, including the workings of the Cabinet committee system, reveal the roles of officials and advisers, and involve both admitting and encouraging pressure upon ministers. … If parliamentary democracy is, as I believe, a unique system of government, partly because it allows us to learn from our own mistakes in time to correct them, the raw material of that experience must be made available in time to use it for that purpose.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech to a Press Gallery luncheon (14 February 1977), quoted in The Times (15 February 1977), p. 4
1970s

Democracy, Time, Learning, Knowledge

“We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. We adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful in detecting elements, for which we have no place in our theory, and no name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in men and in bodies of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical addition of all their measurable properties. There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society. England, strong, punctual, practical, well-spoken England, I should not find, if I should go to the island to seek it. In the parliament, in the playhouse, at dinner-tables, I might see a great number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud men, — many old women, — and not anywhere the Englishman who made the good speeches, combined the accurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It is even worse in America, where, from the intellectual quickness of the race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its promise, and more slight in its performance.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Nominalist and Realist

Reading, Country, Strong, Books

“Now, if ever, we ought to be able to appreciate the whole importance of the stand which was made by our forefathers against the House of Stuart. All around us the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations. Governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. … Meanwhile in our island the regular course of government has never been for a day interrupted. The few bad men who longed for license and plunder have not had the courage to confront for one moment the strength of a loyal nation, rallied in firm array round a parental throne. And, if it be asked what has made us to differ from others, the answer is that we never lost what others are wildly and blindly seeking to regain. It is because we had a preserving revolution in the seventeenth century that we have not had a destroying revolution in the nineteenth. It is because we had freedom in the midst of servitude that we have order in the midst of anarchy. For the authority of law, for the security of property, for the peace of our streets, for the happiness of our houses, our gratitude is due, under Him who raises and pulls down nations at his pleasure, to the Long Parliament, to the Convention, and to William of Orange.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Vol. II, ch. 10
History of England (1849–1861)

Courage, Peace, Housing, Law

“Representative democracy demands a clear division of function between the electors and the elected. The former choose their representatives and retain the essential right of sacking them, if they are not satisfied with their work, at the end of a fixed period. But in the meantime the elected representatives, whether they are members of Parliament or city councillors, should be given full freedom to do their jobs. Any form of referendum is an infringement of this freedom, and the more complex and detailed the issue upon which it is held the more absurd an infringement it becomes.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Letter to The Times with Henry Usborne (22 January 1954), p. 7
1950s

Democracy, Freedom

“Recently, socialist presidents that came before me embezzled hundreds of billions of dollars, corrupting part of our media and our Parliament, all for a project to attain absolute power. They were judged and punished thanks to the patriotism, perseverance and bravery of a judge who is an icon in my country: Dr. Sérgio Moro, our current Minister ofJustice and Public Security. These presidents also transferred a considerable amount of resources to other countries, aiming at promoting and implementing similar projects throughout our region. This funding source has dried up. The same authorities came here every year and made uncommitted statements about issues that never addressed the real interests of Brazil nor contributed to world stability. Despite that, they were praised.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Speech at the at the 74th UN General Assembly. Statement by Mr. Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil http://statements.unmeetings.org/GA74/BR_EN.pdf. United Nations PaperSmart (24 September 2019).

World, Parting, Perseverance, Country

“I just say to everybody in the country, including everyone in Parliament, the fundamental choice is this: Are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum? Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people - and plunge this country into chaos. Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda?”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Brexit: Michel Barnier rejects demands for backstop to be axed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49540681 BBC News (1 September 2019) 2010s, 2019

People, Country

“Parties come and go, governments come and go. But if we lose the power to make and unmake governments, to make and unmake parliaments, then everything else is changed. Even if I were convinced that the result of doing what Michael Foot has described—regaining what we ought never to have given away—even if I were convinced that the result of that would be that we would have Labour administrations for the rest of my lifetime, I would say: well, so be it. But at least we have retained the power to decide under what general principles this nation is going to be governed.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Discussing Britain's membership of the EEC on the BBC Radio 4 series Politics in the Seventies (10 June 1973), quoted in The Times (11 June 1973), p. 3
1970s

Making love, Change

“I do not believe that this nation, which has maintained and defended its independence for a thousand years, will now submit to see it merged or lost; nor did I become a member of our sovereign Parliament in order to consent to that sovereignty being abated or transferred. Come what may, I cannot and will not.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton (13 October 1971), quoted in The Times (14 October 1971), p. 4
1970s

“The omnipotence of Parliament is for the British what for other nations is represented by the constitution, the declaration of independence and the law of human rights all rolled into one. That division of powers which was wrongly deduced from observation of Britain in the eighteenth century is unknown to Britain: just because we have no written constitution, the control of Parliament over both law and government has to be unlimited. In order for Britain to join the Community, the House of Commons has to be told, and to accept, that it will progressively lose its exclusive power to control legislation and government.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Vaduz (15 January 1972), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), pp. 30–31
1970s

Housing, Law, Communication

“There is a sense of hopelessness and helplessness which comes over persons who are trapped or imprisoned, when all their efforts to attract attention and assistance bring no response. This is the kind of feeling which you in Walsall and we in Wolverhampton are experiencing in the face of the continued flow of immigration into our towns. We are of course in a minority – make no mistake about that. Out of over 600 parliamentary constituencies perhaps less than 60 are affected in any way like ourselves. The rest know little or nothing and, we might sometimes be tempted to feel, care little or nothing. Only this week a colleague of mine in the House of Commons was dumbfounded when I told him of a constituent whose little daughter was now the only white child in her class at school. He looked at me as if I were a Member of Parliament for central Africa, who had suddenly dropped from the sky into Westminster. So far as most people in the British Isles are concerned, you and I might as well be living in central Africa for all they know about our circumstances.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Walsall (9 February 1968), quoted in Still to Decide (Elliot Right Way Books, 1972), p. 290
1960s

School, Housing, Personality, Daughters

“Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked good ... We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and his constitution may not last long ...
Comment to the Greek ambassador to Washington, Alexander Matsas, over the Cyprus issue in June 1964. As quoted in I Should Have Died (1977) by Philip Deane, pp. 113-114.
1960s

“It would not be in the interests of the Community that its enlargement should take place except with the full-hearted consent of the parliaments and its peoples of the new member countries.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech in Paris (5 May 1970), quoted in The Times (24 December 1970), p. 3
Leader of the Opposition

Country, People, Heart, Communication

“We of the Labour Party reject policies and measures which failed the nation then and will fail the nation now. We want to lay the foundations of a new and better Britain worthy of our great people. That is why we propose in the interests of the whole nation that the community should become the master of its economic progress and prosperity, instead of leaving control in private hands to be used primarily for the private advantage of a few. In short, we are standing for the common weal. But we need political power to enable us to give practical effect in Parliament to our great forward-looking policies. The nation has now the chance to give Labour the necessary power to do the job, and I appeal to the electors in the constituency which you are contesting to make certain of electing you to the new House of Commons.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Message to Labour candidates, quoted in The Times (29 June 1945), p. 2
Leader of the Opposition

Chance, Housing, People, Communication

“The Revolution and Hanover succession had been objects of the highest veneration to the old Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of the sober and steady spirit of liberty which guided their ancestors; but of their wisdom and provident care of posterity.—The modern Whigs have quite other notions of these events and actions. They do not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words of the acts of parliament which secured the succession, and the just sense of them. They attack not him but the law.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 436

Sense, Wisdom, Law, Success

“The House, which was free to have decided otherwise, takes a stand for the defence of freedom and the destruction of Hitlerism and all that it implies. … The interests of South Africa, however, are our primary concern. … It was for the interests of South Africa that Parliament freely decided to sever our relations with Germany. We pledge our moral support for a common cause. … The Union has no quarrel with the German people as such. Its aim is to assist in the destruction of a system which is seeking to impose on the world a domination of violence and force in international affairs – a system which, as the facts of the past two years have proved, knows no respect for good faith between nations, which does not hesitate to dishonour its plighted word, if convenient to do so, and which threatens the liberty of every state throughout the world.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts expounding the war proclamation of Wednesday, 6 September 1939, as quoted in South Africa at War: How she will help, Staffordshire Sentinel of 7 September 1939, p. 1

Faith, Housing, Freedom, Support

“Tommy Robinson is not far-right… and does not have far-right views. He is someone who can give some information and research which is useful to me. We have always been a democratic, non-racist party. That has always been in our constitution and that is exactly the way we are going to keep it. It is very odd in this day and age when you get called far-right, when what you have spent the last 25 years trying to do is to return government to our own democratically elected Parliament.”

Gerard Batten (1954) British politician

UKIP: Gerard Batten says Nigel Farage trying to 'discredit' party https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47926785 BBC News (14 April 2019) 2019

Way, Age

“Dumping is the exporting to this country of goods from a foreign land under the cost—beneath the price at which they are sold in their own country. There could be only one object in doing that, and that is to make war upon a particular industry in our country. That is unfair. … In the interests of fairness, as well as in the interests of British industry as a whole, the Government have decided to submit to Parliament proposals which will effectively deal with dumping in the sense in which I have defined it.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1919/aug/18/dumping in the House of Commons (18 August 1919) Prime Minister

Sense, War, Making love, Country

“I think it’s important that we challenge the idea that women who have babies are not fit for work and don’t have value. There is massive pregnancy discrimination, in parliament and right across society.”

Jo Swinson (1980) British politician and leader of the Liberal Democrats

Said in a Guardian interview in January 2019. Sethi, Anita (19 January 2019) Jo Swinson MP: ‘I first wrote to my MP when I was about 10’ https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/19/jo-swinson-mp-interview-equal-power-gender-equality-activism in the Guardian. Retrieved 23 July 2019. 2019

Idea, Baby, Thinking, Women

“If the next government is sincere in its desire to reach an agreement with Europe, it must try to get more time. If it does not, the British parliament will insist on getting a new postponement. I will remain a member of the House of Commons. I will do everything in my power from my position to make sure that parliament blocks a Brexit without agreement.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

Philip Hammond will 'not exclude' backing no confidence vote to stop no-deal Brexit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49044966 BBC News (19 July 2019) 2019

Sincerity, Time, Housing, Making love

“I said consistently throughout that we need to get control of our borders and the only way to do that is to leave the European Union… Once we do that we are in a much stronger position to achieve that objective of bringing down migration to tens of thousands within this Parliament - I will stand by that.”

Iain Duncan Smith (1954) British politician

Brexit: New PM 'should come from Leave camp' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36633595 BBC News (26 June 2016) 2016

Way

“It is right for Parliament to have the first say but if we need to break the impasse, our options must include campaigning for a public vote and nobody is ruling out Remain as an option.”

Keir Starmer (1962) British politician and barrister

Labour conference: Members vote to keep referendum option open https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45631792 BBC News (25 September 2018) 2018

“The most vital point on which the difference between the Prime Minister and the First President of India, came to surface in a very big way was the passage of Hindu Code Bill. Before the Hindu Code Bill was to be discussed in the Parliament he had made it clear to the Prime Minister Jawharlal Nehru, that he was not in favour of the Hindu Code Bill. He also told Nehru that the present cabinet had not been elected by the people; they had no right to pass the Hindu Code Bill without the consent of the people. There had been long correspondence between the President and the Prime Minister on this very vital point of grave public importance.”

Rajendra Prasad (1884–1963) Indian political leader

After lot of exchange of letters with the political people concerned, the issue did not come up before the Parliament, in 1960, in p. 21
Source: First Citizen, p. 16

Way, People

“Shutting down parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit - which will do untold and lasting damage to the country against the wishes of MPs - is not democracy, it is dictatorship.”

Nicola Sturgeon (1970) First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party

Brexit: MPs ask Scottish court to block Westminster shutdown https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49496517 BBC News (28 August 2019) 2019

Democracy, Country

“The UK should have left the EU by now and I sincerely regret the fact that I have not yet been able to persuade Parliament to approve a deal.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brexit: UK and EU agree delay to 31 October https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47889404 BBC News (11 April 2019) 2010s, On Brexit

Sincerity

“It is good to see that we agree that the UK should leave the European Union with a deal and that the urgent task at hand is to find a deal that honours our commitments to the people of Northern Ireland, can command support in Parliament and can be negotiated with the EU - not to seek an election or second referendum.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Brexit: Theresa May to give MPs update on Tuesday https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47192233 BBC News (11 February 2019) 2010s, On Brexit

Support, People

“The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation—according to my notion, representing classes or callings—that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Volume I, pp. 17–18
Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman

Birth, Law

“Prolonged and unseasonal droughts are hitting us real hard, and salt water is creeping into our freshwater lands. We are on the very front line of climate change. We are seeking the approval of our Parliament to declare a national climate crisis to spare no effort in mobilizing our response to this fight.”

Hilda Heine (1951) Marshallese politician

Hilda Heine (2019) cited in " We Are On The Front Line Of Climate Change, Marshall Islands President Says https://www.npr.org/2019/09/24/763679518/we-are-on-the-front-line-of-climate-change-marshall-islands-president-says" on npr, 24 September 2019.

Fight, Water, Change, Effort

“As a Member of Parliament, he made a mark opposing policies he thought were harmful and was strongly against growth of monopolies with state patronage.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

PM Chandrashekhar - A firebrand idealist

“He is the president of the Janata Dal (S) (JD-S) political party in India and currently a member of Parliament (MP) representing his home town Hassan district in Karnataka. His party mainly runs on a plank of social justice and has substantial support in South-central Karnataka.”

H. D. Deve Gowda (1933) Indian politician

Profile in: Profile: Haradanahalli Dodde Deve Gowda http://www.indianpoliticians.com/profile/23/ 4 December 2008

Home, Support, Justice

“If it was possible for men who exercise their reason, to believe that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the Parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them has been granted to that body.”

John Dickinson (1732–1808) American politician

But a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that Government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (6 July 1775)

Exercises, Wisdom, Parting, Men

“But now if the gifted soul be not of taciturn nature, be of vivid, impatient, rapidly productive nature, and aspire much to give itself sensible utterance,—I find that, in this case, the field it has in England is narrow to an extreme; is perhaps narrower than ever offered itself, for the like object, in this world before. Parliament, Church, Law: let the young vivid soul turn whither he will for a career, he finds among variable conditions one condition invariable, and extremely surprising, That the proof of excellence is to be done by the tongue. For heroism that will not speak, but only act, there is no account kept.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

World, Soul, Law, Nature

“Aggregation means the organization of elements of a system into patterns that tend to put highly compatible elements together and less compatible elements apart. Landscape theory predicts how aggregation will lead to alignments among actors (such as nations), whose leaders are myopic in their assessments and incremental in their actions. The predicted configurations are based upon the attempts of actors to minimize their frustration based upon their pairwise propensities to align with some actors and oppose others. These attempts lead to a local minimum in the energy landscape of the entire system. The theory is supported by the results of the alignment of seventeen European nations in the Second World War. The theory has potential for application to coalitions of business firms, political parties in parliaments, social networks, social cleavages in democracies, and organizational structures.”

Robert Axelrod book The Complexity of Cooperation

Chap. 4 : Choosing Sides
Adapted from Robert Axelrod and D. Scott Bennett “A Landscape Theory of Aggregation,” British Journal of Political Science 23 (Apr. 1993): 211–33.
The Complexity of Cooperation (1997)

Democracy, Business, War, Support

“The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of parliaments.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975)
The Green Book (1975)

World

“Now there is no more noise, no more confusion, no more talking, no more parliament, or parliamentarism. The Corps Législatif, the Senate, the Council of State, have all had their mouths sewn up.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Book V, IX
Napoleon the Little (1852)

“We will and concede for us and all our heirs and successors, by the common counsel, assent and consent of the prelates, magnates, earls and barons and communities of our realm in our parliament that the Kingdom of Scotland, shall remain for ever separate in all respects from the Kingdom of England, in its entirety, free and in peace, without any kind of subjection, servitude, claim or demand.”

Edward III of England (1312–1377) King of England

Letters-patent (1 March 1328), quoted in G. W. S. Barrow, Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 333–334

Peace, Communication

“It is my honestly held view that Parliament will not be able to get a deal on Brexit and therefore the only choice, reluctantly, is to ask the people to take another look at it.”

Tom Watson (Labour politician) (1967) British politician

Brexit: 'High price to pay' for Labour stance, says Watson https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48658683 BBC News (17 June 2019) 2019

People

“Now is not the time to campaign to rejoin but we must keep the dream alive, especially for young people who are overwhelmingly pro-European. I hold in my heart the knowledge that one day I will be back in this [the European Parliament] chamber, celebrating our return to the heart of Europe.”

Molly Scott Cato (1963) British economist and Member of the European Parliament

Said in a speech to the European Parliament after she voted against ratifying the UK's Brexit withdrawl agreement. Molly Scott Cato: 'One day I will be back' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-51303316/molly-scott-cato-one-day-i-will-be-back (29 January 2020) 2020

Time, Dreams, People, Heart

“The evils of society cannot be remedied by acts of parliament.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Travels in the North of Germany (1820), p. 98, Vol. 2

Evil

“You will be a Parliament for the whole community. We used to say that we could not trust an Irish Parliament in Dublin to do justice to the Protestant minority. Let us take care that that reproach can no longer be made against your Parliament, and from the outset let them see that the Catholic minority have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority. ... Let us take care that we win all that is best amongst those who have been opposed to us in this community. ... And so I say: from the start be tolerant to all religions, and, while maintaining to the last your own traditions and your own citizenship, take care that similar rights are preserved for those who differ from us.”

Edward Carson, Baron Carson (1854–1935) Irish politician, barrister and judge

Speech https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/dup/pr290312.htm to the Ulster Unionist Council in Belfast (4 February 1921), quoted in Geoffrey Lewis, Carson: The Man Who Divided Ireland (2006), pp. 227–28

Fear, Religion, Justice, Communication

“I have said on many occasions, in Parliament and elsewhere, that I am not convinced that this [the restoration of corporal punishment for young offenders] would have the effect for which its advocates hope.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Speech to the Association of Chief Officers of Police in Bournemouth (25 May 1960), quoted in The Times (26 May 1960), p. 18
Home Secretary

Hope

“Opinion has been right to fasten upon sovereignty as the central issue. Either British entry is a declaration of intent to surrender this country's sovereignty, stage by stage, in all that matters as a nation, and makes a nation, or else it is an empty gesture, disgraceful in its hollowness alike to those who proffer and to whose who accept it. The superior people laugh at those who talk about losing our Queen and our Monarchy. ... The Queen is the Queen in Parliament, as truly today as when her predecessor, Tudor Henry, observed that ‘we are nowhere so high in our estate royal as in this Our High Court of Parliament’. The question which the people of this country will have proposed to them is: will you, or will you not, continue to be governed by the Queen in Parliament? It is no less than that, and they have understood it.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Doncaster (19 June 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (1973), p. 119

Country, Making love, People, Question

“Denning said that while hanging was seen as uncivilized, he believed most people would like to see it restored for the premeditated, deliberate killing carried out by IRA bombers. He believed Parliament would never vote to bring it back.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Response to the Remembrance Day bombing (8 November 1987), quoted in The Times (9 November 1987), p. 2

People

“Fundamental to our constitution is the supremacy of the Queen in Parliament and that our laws should be enacted by Parliament, by its authority in regulations, or indeed by judges in declaring the common law. That is what I understand is meant by the supremacy and sovereignty of the Queen in Parliament. I hope to show you in the course of my observations that that sovereignty is being eroded and that we are coming under another sovereignty—that of Europe and of the Council of Ministers. That is the challenge we face today.”

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning (1899–1999) British judge

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1986/jul/31/european-communities-amendment-bill-1#S5LV0479P0_19860731_HOL_228 in the House of Lords against the Single European Act (31 July 1986)

Law, Hope, Understanding

“We be informed by our judges that we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head and you as members are conjoined and knit together into one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury (during that time) is offered to the meanest member of the House is to be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of Parliament.”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Speech to Parliament on parliamentary privilege (March/April 1542), as quoted in Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland Volume III (1808), by Raphael Holinshed, p. 824

Personality, Time, Housing

“There are laws far more powerful for us Catholics, far more powerful than those espoused in Party political agendas and pushed by the vested interests of powerful pressure groups: Natural law, the structures of the human personality built into mankind by God the Creator into the mind and heart of human beings, and the Divine law, the law of Almighty God expressed in the Commandments and in the New Ways of Jesus Christ, illustrated so clearly in the Gospels; Divine and Natural Law which we must always obey and which can never be trumped by the Laws of man, however democratically expressed by Parliament – whichever Parliament – when they clash with the Laws of God. The Law of God is a much higher Law, the ultimate Law. To rebel against the design of the Creator is a grave matter indeed!”

Stephen Robson (1951) Bishop of Dunkeld

Bishop Stephen Robson’s homily https://www.dunkelddiocese.co.uk/chrism-mass-st-andrews-cathedral-2019/ (17 April 2019)

God, Law, Personality, Heart

“The Crown used to call a Parliament annually, but there was not an annual election. These words, annuo parliamento, relate to the time of their meeting, and not their election.”

Giles Rooke (1743–1808) British judge (1743-1808)

Trial of Redhead alias Yorke (1795), 25 How. St. Tr. 1081.

Time

“We asked the people to decide, they decided... that means we can't come up with something else in Parliament”

Penny Mordaunt (1973) British politician (born 1973)

Brexit: Theresa May says David Cameron 'not advising her' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46592394 BBC News (17 December 2018) 2018

People

“Prolonged involvement with Parliament has in the end convinced me that the customary concentration on it as the centre of public affairs, however traditional it may be, is entirely misleading. This is a message, it seems to me, that needs to be absorbed into the general history of England.”

Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) historian

Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 (1986)

History

“There's a terrible kind of collaboration as it were, going on between people who think they can block Brexit in Parliament and our European friends.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Source: Boris Johnson: Brexit opponents 'collaborating' with EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49348072 BBC News (14 August 2019)

People, Thinking

“Our local representatives do not participate in the deliberations. Of course, they are not member of parliaments like you, but we are each other's neighbors, share a common history and in many ways, we are each other's fellow sufferers.”

Edison Rijna (1967) Dutch politician on Bonaire

Source: Edison Rijna (2021) cited in: " IPKO should develop friendship between Kingdom countries https://www.curacaochronicle.com/post/main/ipko-should-develop-friendship-between-kingdom-countries/" in Curaçao Chronicle, 24 August 2021.

History, Suffering, Way

“Our people humanized the violent, inhumane slave plantation society that the British colonialists had established, (but) we are still faced with the insidious nature of a culture that is intended to dehumanize black people wherever black or blackness is found, and our parliaments therefore, while we shall be in the vanguard of removing all laws of discrimination, it is the mental emancipation that shall forever always matter.”

Mia Mottley (1965) prime minister of Barbados

Mia Mottley (2021) cited in: " Mia Mottley: Barbados’ first female leader on a mission to transform island https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/mia-mottley-barbados-first-female-leader-mission-to-transform-island" in The Guardian, 3 December 2021.

People, Law, Nature

“Above all, maintain the line of demarcation between parties; for it is only by maintaining the independence of party that you can maintain the integrity of public men, and the power and influence of Parliament itself.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in the House of Commons (22 January 1846), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume I, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 110

Men

“We desire to see the return of a liberal age where Parliaments will guard freedom, where science will open the banqueting halls to the millions, and where what Bismarck once called "practical Christianity" will mitigate suffering and misfortunes.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: 'No Intervention In Spain' (8 January 1937), quoted in Winston Churchill, Step by Step, 1936–1939 (1939; 1947), p. 84

Freedom, Suffering, Age, Science

“No country will allow its legislative structure, parliament or congress to be filled up by treasonists, foreign agents or proxies of foreign forces. The Hong Kong electoral system must therefore be protected from exploitation and from foreign interference.”

John Lee Ka-chiu (1957) Chief Executive-elect of Hong Kong

"Speech by CS at online side event on Hong Kong-related issues during 49th session of United Nations Human Rights Council" https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/202203/16/P2022031600619.htm (16 March 2022)

Country

“The devolution debate will be based upon a proposition no less objectively false than to assert that two and two make five. It is the proposition that it is possible to establish one or more local parliaments within the unitary parliamentary state known as the United Kingdom.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the City Conservative Forum in London (12 November 1975), quoted in The Times (13 November 1975), p. 4
1970s

Falseness

“Everyone was supposed to go to parliament to work with their heads. For some, working with their heads didn't work out, so they went on to employ their fists. As an expert in this matter I can say that they didn't manage to do it very well, either.”

Vitali Klitschko (1971) Ukrainian boxer and politician

2013
Source: [У депутатов новой Рады не получается работать ни головой, ни кулаками - Кличко, https://politics.segodnya.ua/politics/U-deputatov-novoy-Rade-ne-poluchaetsya-rabotat-ni-golovoy-ni-kulakami-Klichko-408225.html, 2022-06-13, politics.segodnya.ua, ru]

“The Women of Cumann na mBan

The struggle is a-fading
Drifting to history
Yet the importance of these women
Does not need persuading

In Belfast was Winnie Carney
Who worked for freedom’s gain
She was a trade unionist in Dublin
When Connolly was slain

Travelling the country
Was Bloxham from May-o
A magnificent orator
Her resignation was blow

We must mention Jen Wyse-Power
Once the president
She supported the Treaty
Which made everyone sour

It was the great Sorcha MacMahon
Moving to-and-from the Four Courts
Fundraising for dependants
And arranging the transports

Do not forget Maud Mitchell
The first Captain of the Midlands
The executive’s fine beauty
In Cork she gave commands

Of course, there was Maud Gonne
And Countess Markievicz
For many years great warriors
'Til on parliament they split

After many hours of conflict
Settles does the dust
Yet the ideals of these women
Carry on they must”

Unknown author

Dependency, History, Country, Support

“Democracy: I vote because the politicians we vote for are our voice in the parliaments.”

Peter Fiebag (1958) German teacher

Democracy

Quotes about parliament page 5

Quotes about parliament
page 5