Top 738 Parliament Quotes & Sayings - Page 11

At the time, Jean-Claude [Juncker] was already an important man in Brussels. I was a young representative in the European Parliament. We talked for a long time and from that point on, our connection became increasingly deep. But our working-class origins are at least as important to our bond.

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.

PAP leaders, including Mr. Shanmugam, routinely ask WP MPs to clarify their positions on the spot, in Parliament. WP MPs routinely do the same to PAP ministers.

Our job... as we take forward this mantle of leadership as a new generation is to ensure that we not only bring our party back together, which has been bruised and battered this week, but that... we bring the parliament back together.

Every British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great- Britain.

I got an invitation to speak in the European parliament and I met Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the U.N. I took those opportunities to talk about what I thought was right. That those people, who are more important and powerful than I am, think I'm relevant enough to give a speech is mind-blowing.

I really don't have time at the moment for coalition debates. The voters will decide what the next parliament will look like. Those who wish to form a coalition with The Social Democrats can take a look at our platform and then they are more than welcome to talk to us.

I would encourage anyone who shares our liberal values in or outside parliament to join our party and join our liberal movement. Our door is absolutely open.

I am very proud of our Supreme Court - it is one of the best worldwide. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, we have seen a certain imbalance in the relationship between the judiciary, the parliament and the government. The Supreme Court behaved in an activist way. We have to debate the degree to which such Supreme Court activism is appropriate.

The sanction of force stands behind the medley of personal orders and regulations of Martial Law. The sanction of the people's consent stands behind the hierarchy of laws. In one situation, the population is regimented into acquiescence. In the other, the population voluntarily establishes a contract with Parliament.

Our armed forces, not our parliament of dunces, are our pride. Doubting our armed forces' integrity and honesty is a disgraceful travesty.

Remember: real politics isn't about figureheads and seats in parliament. Real politics is about ideas. And there can be no doubt regarding the extreme ideas that have been gaining ground in the Netherlands for decades.

The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.

When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man [Sir William Keith], who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated and attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and, lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self preservation and defense.

But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies - and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,--the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects.

We have no functioning parliament in Egypt and months ago Mohammed Morsi assumed legislative functions. Now he's decided that there should be no opposition to the laws that he makes and that he is authorized to pass any national security measure. It is difficult to be more absolutist than that. And the constitutional convention - what a sad gathering; it threatens to send us back to the darkest period of the Middle Ages.

Australia was once a leader in taking global warming seriously. The former PM [Kevin Rudd] called it 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. But in the past couple of years the national consensus has been eroded and Australians are being encouraged by the polluters and their mates in Parliament to forget it was ever mentioned. It's heartbreaking.

The House of Commons has the undoubted rights to expel members for misconduct. This is an absolute authority which cannot be challenged in any court, as it derives from the twin concept of the High Court of Parliament being the most senior court in the land and of each House's right to regulate its own affairs.

When I was asked to manage some issues in Europe for the government, I didn't go to Parliament and just make a great speech and impress them. Instead, I will go down and discuss with those people about certain issues that we don't agree, and over a glass of wine we talk about it and they say 'okay, let's forget it.'

Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out, to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.

The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.

The Treaty of Lisbon gave the European parliament a stronger role as co-legislator and the European Council its own president. Furthermore, the treaty introduced checks on subsidiarity - the concept that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the citizens - in an effort to cut back on unnecessary rules and regulations.

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

When I was young, I had an 'aha' moment in church. There was a thing called testimony service, and somebody would sing a song, and everyone else would join in, finding a note where they fit. During one of those, a light went on in my head. In that moment, I heard everything - Parliament, the Staple Singers, Curtis Mayfield, Prince - in there.

On NAFTA, the Canadian Parliament... is united. We have our partisan differences. When we hold the government to account, as is our role in our parliamentary system, we will absolutely point out what we think they should be doing differently. But when it comes to our relationship with the United States, we do speak with one voice.

The entire animal rights movement in the United States reacted with unfettered glee at the Ban in England ...We view this act of parliament as one of the most important actions in the history of the animal rights movement. This will energise our efforts to stop hunting with hounds.

Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Greens will continue to champion a fairer society rather than simply the economy and to champion the parliament rather than simply the stock exchange .

Diversity is not a politically correct idea. Diversity in a boardroom or in a Parliament means that you just have different minds, different life experience, different ways of thinking about patients or customers or voters so that when you bring that intellect, you look at opportunity and risk, and then you have it in much better balance.

As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.

If India is notorious for never punishing scamsters and letting politicians get away with loot, rape, murder and worse, it is because they are part of a cozy conspiracy of silence. There are innumerable instances of how politicians as a class let each other off the hook after kicking up some dust in parliament.

Post-genocide Rwanda has managed to implement a good universal health insurance scheme that covers a large proportion of the population. This came about because of the severity of the country's problems and the resulting high proportion of women in the parliament and among professional caregivers, which had a positive effect on policy.

You always draw from your roots. I'm influenced by everything I hear and see, and that includes music today, but obviously I go back to my early influences: Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Earth, Wind & Fire, Ohio Players, Average White Band. Those kind of artists are what I look to. When I hear that stuff on the radio, I turn it up!

Back in 1956, we signed a treaty and surprisingly it was ratified both by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Parliament. But then Japan refused to implement it and after that the Soviet Union also, so to say, nullified all the agreements reached within the framework of the treaty.

When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies; everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations.

The office of Speaker is almost as ancient as Parliament itself. It emerged in the Middle Ages when the Commons - the ordinary people - of England needed a spokesman in their dealings with the King, someone who would voice their grievances and present their petitions. This was by no means a safe or easy thing to do at that time, and potential spokesman generally had to be pressured into accepting the responsibility.

You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.

Compare the scale and magnifcence of Versailles with St James's - the brick-built hovel in which the 18th-century kings of England lived. What was then the most powerful monarchy in the world housed its sovereigns in a converted leper hospital, yet, at the same time, parliament provided the magnificent palaces of Chelsea and Greenwich as hospitals for retired soldiers and sailors.

I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen's courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen's courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of Parliament struck down.

We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.

When I was a little bitty kid, I was listening to the stuff my parents were listening to. My mom was a huge Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige fan. My dad had a cover band that I sang with, and he loved Parliament, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, the blues, James Brown.

If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

My party was the only party that opposed the bifurcation of the state in Parliament, and I was suspended from the House along with the other MP from my party. TDP supported and voted for bifurcation, as did the Congress and BJP. Every party barring mine voted.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime.

But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to parliament [or congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever.

The world's moving; people move around the world. A lot of people coming to this country have terrific talent to bring to the country - not just in business and in the professions but in Parliament as well. And we need some failsafe system so that, right at the outset, they are aware that they have to drop any other citizenship.

When Cameron said to me 'you're a dinosaur,' several people in Parliament said to me 'you're trendin', Dennis, you're trendin' - and I didn't know what it meant. I know now what it is.

From Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela to Equatorial Guinea and the Ivory Coast, China dangles lavish, low-interest loans and sophisticated weapons systems as bait. It then uses its 'weapons of mass construction,' a huge army of engineers and labourers, to build everything from roads and dams to parliament buildings and palaces.

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.

I accept of course we're in deep trouble and deep difficulty. But if we, under a new leader, reinvent ourselves properly as a Brexit party, we will be faced with the inevitability at some point of a general election in order to deliver Brexit because this Parliament is stopping the delivery of Brexit.

I'm the first Thai prime minister in history that first time win half of parliament seats and second time win 76% of parliamentary seats and I was ousted because too popular.

When I grew up in India, telephones were a rarity. In fact, they were so rare that elected members of Parliament had the right to allocate 15 telephone lines as a favor to those they deemed worthy. If you were lucky enough to be a wealthy businessman or an influential journalist, or a doctor or something, you might have a telephone.

All of a sudden inscriptions appeared on walls. Signs appeared. And that 'no' exploded all over India, in an act of pride that surprised even me. Then even the political parties, all of them, even the deputies in Parliament, said no: it's better to die of hunger than be taken for a nation of beggars.

I grew up in a mixed-race family in Bristol. My cousin was this white guy who was interested in Parliament, Marc Bolan, Bowie. His friends were football thugs and while I was getting ready for bed, they'd be listening to all that music. When I was older, I'd go to a Jamaican sound system and there were no white people.