Parliament Quotes - Page 15

• The mark of a single currency is not only that all other currencies must be extinguished but that the capacity of other institutions to issue currencies must also be extinguished...In the case of the United Kingdom, that would involve Parliament binding its successors in a way that it has hitherto regarded as unconstitutional.

  Norman Tebbit

  Issues, Kingdoms, Way

  House of Commons Debate, publications.parliament.uk. October 30, 1990.

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• 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

  Effort, Principles, Kind

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.218, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Kings, Powerful, Mean

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.225, Harvard University Press

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• It is beginning to be doubtful whether Parliament and Congress sit in Westminster and Washington, or in the editorial rooms of the leading journals,--so thoroughly is everything debated before the authorized and responsible debaters get on their legs.

  James Russell Lowell

  Legs, Rooms, Printing

  James Russell Lowell (1897). “Literary and political addresses”

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• So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this night, that if, during the almost forty years that I have had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and the conscious satisfaction, that I had done my duty.

  Charles James Fox

  Night, Thinking, Years

  Charles James Fox (1815). “The speeches of the right honourable Charles James Fox, in the House of Commons”, p.659

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• 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

  Past, Men, Forever

  "The poetical works of John Keats. With a memoir, by James Russell Lowell" by John Keats, James Russell Lowell, New York: J. Miller, 1871.

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• You may twist the word freedom as long as you please, but at last it comes to quiet enjoyment of your own property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want any of those things that are called political rights and privileges? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at elections for members of parliament? Oh! Because they shall then have an influence over the conduct of those members. And of what use is that? Oh! Then they will prevent the members from doing wrong.

  William Cobbett

  Men, Rights, Long

  William Cobbett (2012). “A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland”, p.231, TAN Books

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• The pre-war empire had been sufficiently informal and sufficiently cheap for Parliament to claim authority over it without having to concern itself too much about what this authority entailed. The post-war empire necessitated a much greater investment in administrative machinery and military force. This build-up of control had to be paid for, either by British taxpayers or by their colonists.

  Linda Colley

  Military, War, Empires

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• 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

  Party, Years, Decision

  "Liberal Party Further Divided by ETS Negogiations as Tony Abbott Abandons Malcolm Turnbull's Push for Amendments". www.heraldsun.com.au. November 20, 2009.

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• Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Together, Sovereign, Crowns

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.203, Harvard University Press

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• [Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?

  Trent Lott

  President, Prime, Ministers

  "A Jolly Good Show, but the Wrong Side of the Pond" by Dana Milbank, www.washingtonpost.com. June 12, 2007.

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• But please remember, that in 1991 in the Sejm [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

  Country, Special, Demand

  Janusz Korwin-Mikke's blog, April 7, 2010.

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• The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Law, Support

  Edmund Burke (2005). “Burke, Select Works”, p.73, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• My desire to get here [Parliament] was like miners'coal dust, it was under my fingers and I couldn't scrub it out.

  Betty Boothroyd

  Dust, Desire, Coal

  Quoted in Glenys Kinnock and Fiona Millar (eds) By Faith and Daring (1993).

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• And further, I tell you that the Jew is right, when he acts as he does - because we are too timid to be as German as the Jew is Jewish! ... It happened at the time of the [Bavarian] Soviet Republic: When the unleashed subhumans rambled murdering through the streets, the deputies hid behind a chimney in the Bavarian parliament.

  Julius Streicher

  Doe, Republic, Deputies

  "Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938.

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• 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

  Cousin, Father, Sides

  David Lange (2005). “My life”, Viking Adult

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• The old shepherd had died, or got drunk, or got rats, or got the sack, or a legacy, or got sane, or chucked it, or got lost, or found, or a wife, or had cut his throat, or hanged himself, or got into Parliament or the peerage anyway, anything had happened to him that can happen to an old shepherd or any other man in the bush, and he wasn't there.

  Henry Lawson

  Cutting, Men, Drunk

  Henry Lawson (1984). “A Fantasy of Man: Henry Lawson Complete Works, 1901-1922”

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• I am half-surprised to find that as I go on I get more and more confirmed in the old advanced Liberal principles, economic, social, and political, with which I entered Parliament 30 years ago.

  Henry Campbell-Bannerman

  Years, Political, Principles

  Letter to John Spencer on February 19, 1900. "CB: a Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman". Book by John Wilson, p. 326, 1973.

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• I learned early that business is business and politics is politics. The proof is how few important businessmen have made good politicians. They may think that they are very smart about everything because they made millions of dollars by digging a hole in the ground and finding oil, but the talent and luck needed to become rich are not the same talent and luck needed to succeed on Parliament Hill.

  Jean Chretien

  Smart, Thinking, Digging A Hole

  "Straight from the Heart". Book by Jean Chretien, 1985.

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• [Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

  David Lloyd George

  Party, Democracy, Principles

  "The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911-1928". Book by Charles Prestwich Scott, 1970.

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• 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

  Community, Members Of Parliament, Given

  "The New Canada". Book by Preston Manning, 1992.

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• I cannot... perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform... when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself.

  William Cobbett

  Views, Adoption, Political

  Political Register, March 15, 1806.

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• Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with grater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?

  Anthony Trollope

  Autumn, Office, Doe

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.2289, e-artnow

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• We study the glory of God, and the honour and liberty of parliament, for which we unanimously fight, without seeking our own interests... I profess I could never satisfy myself on the justness of this war, but from the authority of the parliament to maintain itself in its rights; and in this cause I hope to prove myself an honest man and single-hearted.

  Oliver Cromwell

  War, Fighting, Men

  Oliver Cromwell (18??). “Oliver Cromwell's letters & speeches: with elucidations”

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• 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

  Wells, Paraphrase, Extremes

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

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