Top 178 Commons Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

It would be wholly wrong constitutionally for the unelected House of Lords to do anything, to kill anything of a financial nature that has been through the House of Commons not once but twice.

Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.

Public crowdfunding still suffers from a tragedy of the commons problem. Everyone will want the benefit of the crowdfunded efforts but is incentivized to sit on the sidelines and hope others chip in.

The House Of Commons has never been a tea-party. It consists of strong-minded, often very idealistic people, who are trying to accomplish something for our country. We are inheritors of an adversarial system and that, in itself, fosters conflict.

One-man-one-vote combined with "free entry" into government-democracy--implies that every person and his personal property comes within reach of-and is up for grabs by-everyone else: a "tragedy of the commons" is created.

It is quite wrong for party conferences to be used as an excuse for the Commons not to sit. Conferences could be held at weekends.

If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.

Most Canadians don't understand the House of Commons. They turn on their televisions, see us yelling at one another, and dismiss us as a bunch of fools.

We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

When I first came to the House of Commons and walked out into the lobby, men sprang to their feet. I asked them to sit down since I'd come to walk around. I didn't want them doing me favours.

Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

'Creative Commons' is the self-congratulatory name of a self-congratulatory movement. Somewhat like kibbutz on the Internet, the idea is to write programs - 'free ware' - and distribute them without charge.

[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

We are the same. There is no difference anywhere in the world. People are people. They laugh, cry, feel, and love, and music seems to be the commons denomination that brings us all together. Music cuts through all boundaries and goes right to the soul.

The government's instinct is to shroud itself in secrecy - to act like the office of a president instead of as a collective cabinet government held to account by the elected House of Commons.

But first, the news: The House of Commons was sealed off today after police chased an escaped lunatic through the front door during Prime Minister's question time. A spokesman at Scotland Yard said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

As far as the environment is concerned, I am becoming pessimistic because I do not see anybody stepping up and taking the long view approach. It seems like we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons where everyone is trying to contribute as little as possible to get out of this situation.

Jim Sheridan, the MP who wants to ban sketchwriters from the Commons for being rude about politicians, is a blithering idiot. Sorry, scrub that - clearly a very thoughtful person with whom I might conceivably disagree on some marginal issues. A blithering savant, perhaps.

That's something I've always been down with: creative commons and people being able to license their music and allow other people to reuse it and recycle it.

I studied politics and economics at Bristol, and people always assumed that I'd go into politics or a non-government organisation when I left. I might well do this later on. I'd love to represent a West Country seat in the House of Commons.

I can't get very excited about the House of Commons these days because I don't feel the power is there. What is really bizarre is that you sense it is not in Washington either. It is now very hard even to locate the levers of power, let alone to pull them and change things.

I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the peoplethat was his message.

When I was 14 I told my mother I intended to be in the House of Commons in the morning, in court in the afternoon and on stage in the evening. She realised then a fantasist had been born.

When I was 14, I told my mother I intended to be in the House of Commons in the morning, in court in the afternoon and on stage in the evening. She realised then a fantasist had been born.

I never aspired to be Speaker simply so I could say, 'I am the Speaker of the House of Commons,' and tell my children that.

It was surprising to me to hear a member question whether another member of the House was an adult. We're all adults in the House of Commons, and I think it diminishes us all to suggest otherwise.

Labour believes that every trade deal should come before parliament for a full debate on the floor of the House of Commons, with a vote at the end of that debate.

If you believe in democracy, you accept, by definition, the existence and triumph of opposing ideas. The people who believe deeply in the Internet's force as a commons operate on that kind of premise.

In my mind, he was guilty of no error - he was chargeable with no exaggeration - he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince

Many, many times I would shake my head in dismay at the goings-on in the House of Commons, but that never caused me to lose my fundamental faith in the values of our parliamentary institutions.

None of our political writers . . . take notice of any more than three estates, namely, Kings, Lords and Commons . . . passing by in silence that very large and powerful body which form the fourth estate in the community . . . the Mob.

Well, why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good square look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.

Wikipedia is an amazing construct. It's a commons that works. I don't know how Jimmy Wales came up with it. I'm sure all of us would have said, "This is the stupidest thing we've ever heard of. That'll never work in a million years."

We walked out of this library building downtown, just on our way to lunch, and I was walking a few steps behind Travolta, and when he opened the door, it was as if Jesus had just walked out into the commons.

What distinguishes a commons is that it is not private property, does not have a price, and is oriented towards 'use value' rather than 'exchange value.' It does not exist to generate profits.

It is easy to carp at colleges, and the college, if he will wait for it, will have its own turn. Genius exists there also, but will not answer a call of a committee of the House of Commons. It is rare, precious, eccentric, and darkling.

Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented.

But communism is the only thing which says all things should be brought into the hands of commons to benefit all people. In the past, you'd call that communism. I think in the future, we'll have to call that common sense.

In Westminster, I make sure I maximise my ability to represent my constituents. I can do that in a variety of ways: by asking written questions or questions in the House of Commons, through the scrutiny of bills and by sitting on the environmental audit select committee every week, as well as other committees.

In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

For however much the state may gain by not having to fund roads on its own, society would lose in aggregate if the open commons of transportation were lost.

There's no secret about my ambition, I do not want to go into the House of Commons. My only real political interest is in London and if one day I'm in a position to run for mayor, then terrific.

I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it.

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park. Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.

Anyone who's tuned in to the House of Commons TV coverage knows the benches are often empty. I like that. I'm a big fan of political transparency. It's good for us to know which debates the MPs consider important enough to show up for, and which not.

One of the initiatives I have pursued in Parliament has been to make it easier for the public to see what their MPs do in the House of Commons by removing the ban on Parliamentary filming appearing on YouTube or similar web sites.

Using political power, the elite can induce local authorities to facilitate enclosure and privatisation of land, water, and other hitherto public amenities. And they can pressurise public administrations to cut taxes, reducing financial resources for maintaining the remaining commons.

We are keenly in sympathy with the representatives of Labour. We have too few of them in the House of Commons. The Liberal party, high and low, have discovered, if they ever forgot it, that the real road to success lies in adhering to the old principles of the party.

The Government have consistently made it clear that the mechanism in the United Kingdom whereby the European draft constitutional treaty could be implemented is approval by the House of Commons followed by a referendum of the people of Britain. There is no question of implementing it by the back door.

When I was an MP, John Prescott barracked me in the House of Commons, shouting: 'Woolly jumper! Woolly jumper!'

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

We have a maxim in the House of Commons, and written on the walls of our houses, that old ways are the safest and surest ways.

Show me a first-generatio n fortune and I'll show you a successful partnership between a talented individual and society's invisible venture capitalist, the commons.

The government have only a small majority in the House of Commons. I want to make it quite clear that this will not affect our ability to govern. Having been charged with the duties of Government we intend to carry out those duties.

Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact.

Universities are some of the few places left where a struggle for the commons, for public life, if not democracy itself, can be made visible through the medium of collective voices and social movements energized by the need for a politics and way of life counter to authoritarian capitalism.