A Quote by Michael Portillo

A parliamentary democracy that has developed its delicate balances over hundreds of years will not give up its sovereign rights. — © Michael Portillo
A parliamentary democracy that has developed its delicate balances over hundreds of years will not give up its sovereign rights.
Look, there is parliamentary democracy in most European countries, there is parliamentary democracy in Japan, there is parliamentary democracy in many countries, but in the United States, for some reason, the State is organized differently, there is quite a stringent presidential republic.
We used to fight for democracy. Democracy used to matter. We now treat it with contempt. We have turned our backs on values that we built up over hundreds of years, for the benefit of politicians in Europe. To me, that is heartbreaking.
I went - I had designed - in high school designed hundreds and hundreds of computers over and over and over, so I developed these skills without ever thinking I'd do it in life as job.
That ‘hundreds and hundreds’ was taken totally out of context. When I was making a point to this person, I was making a point that over my 31 years in the National Football League I’ve seen a lot of changes. There were hundreds and hundreds of things over those years that I’ve seen that have gotten better. Domestic violence is one of those.
Parliamentary sovereignty - the right to pass laws as the supreme legal authority in the land, including laws that limit the powers of the executive - has been hard-won over hundreds of years. We trample on it at our peril.
At the end of the day, these are issues that need to be discussed: femicides, among other things - immigrant rights, women's' rights, indigenous people's rights, animal rights, Mother Earth's rights. If we don't talk about these topics, then we have no place in democracy. It won't exist. Democracy isn't just voting; it's relegating your rights.
Since I've grown up I really wanted to be able to create something different. In Persian music, opposite, again, to classical music, that the instrument developed and evolved over, like, hundreds of years, our instrument all remained the same.
We’ve learned that it will take more than one generation to bring about change. The fight for civil rights has developed into a broader concern for human rights, and that encompasses a great many people and countries. Those of us who live in a democracy have a responsibility to be the voice for those whose voices are stilled.
If democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.
I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.
We started off with physical evolution and got our form. Then we somehow developed language, which meant cultural evolution could race so we could change our behavior really quickly instead of over hundreds and hundreds of years. And then comes moral evolution, which means we're not frightfully far along with people. And maybe we end up with a spiritual evolution, which is this connectedness with the rest of the life forms on the planet.
Nobody who's thought about politics or democracy over the thousands of years that people have been thinking about democracy hasn't come up against the fact that the people will often be wrong. And what do you do when they are? You can't just say, 'Well, it's the will of the people.'
The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.
If you give up on politics, you're giving up on democracy. And if you give up on democracy, you're basically saying to the moneyed interests, the powerful people and institutions of society, take it all. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then we give up. Then we are 100 percent plutocracy.
Frederick Douglas's agenda was an agenda, not for black people to get out of slavery. It was for America to become a better democracy. And it's spilt over for women's rights; it's split over for worker's rights and so forth.
Yet, most of the readily accessible reserves of oil formed over hundreds of millions of years will be consumed within a single generation, spanning the years from 1960 to 1995.
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