House Of Commons Quotes - Page 2

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  There's a lot of people I've encouraged and helped to get into the House of Commons. Looking at them now, I'm not so sure it was a wise thing to do.

  Edward Heath

  Wise, People, House

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• 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.

  Harold Wilson

  Government, House, Majority

  Television broadcast in October 1964 after winning the general election. "Coalitions in British Politics". Book by Robert Blake, p. 99, 1978.

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• But there's certainly only one thing I could never agree with George Galloway on. He's a teetotaller and wants to close all the bars in the House of Commons. That is just not on.

  Nigel Farage

  House, Bars, Want

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• It is recorded how towards the end of the eighteenth century a Muslim visitor to England was taken to see the House of Commons at work. He later wrote of his astonishment at finding the that the British Parliament actually made laws and fixed punishments for their infraction - because unlike Muslims the English had not accepted a divine law revealed from heaven and therefore had to resort to such unsatisfactory expedients. Muslims still understand the expression 'the rule of law' very differently than do most Westerners.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Taken, Expression, Law

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Husband, Thinking, Blow

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.205, OUP Oxford

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• I am seeking every day to restore faith in Parliament - to ensure we have a House of Commons which is representative, effective and reconnected to the people we serve.

  John Bercow

  People, House, Parliament

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• 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.

  Agnes Macphail

  Men, Feet, House

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• No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Funny, Marriage, Witty

  "Disraeli and his Day". Book by Sir William Fraser, 1891.

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• If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

  Winston Churchill

  Not Giving Up, House, Devil

  The Second World War vol. 3 (1950)

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• I have always been a House of Commons man.

  John Diefenbaker

  Men, House

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• I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

  William Blake

  Wise, Hurt, Sorry

  William Blake (1988). “William Blake”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• 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.

  John Allen Fraser

  Country, Strong, Party

  John Allen Fraser (1993). “The House of Commons at Work”, Montréal : Éditions de la Chenelière

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• The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take common sense quantum sufficit; add a little application to the rules and orders of the House [of Commons], throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Order, Light, Common Sense

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.296, Oxford University Press

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• We have a saying in the House of Commons; that old ways are the safest and surest ways.

  Edward Coke

  House, Way, Old Ways

  1628 Speech, London, 8 May.

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• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  College, House, Waiting

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• I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons.

  John Bright

  House, Facts, Poor

  John Bright, H. J. Leech (1885). “The Public Letters of John Bright”, London : S. Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington

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• Until the late-nineteenth-century the House of Commons maintained a formal ban on the reporting of its debates.

  Clive Ponting

  House, Debate, Bans

  Clive Ponting (1990). “Secrecy in Britain”

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• 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.

  Tony Blair

  Men, House, Pay

  Debate, www.publications.parliament.uk. June 27, 2007.

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• A formative influence on my undergraduate self was the response of a respected elder statesmen of the Oxford Zoology Department when an American visitor had just publicly disproved his favourite theory. The old man strode to the front of the lecture hall, shook the American warmly by the hand and declared in ringing, emotional tones: "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years." And we clapped our hands red. Can you imagine a Government Minister being cheered in the House of Commons for a similar admission? "Resign, Resign" is a much more likely response!

  Richard Dawkins

  Men, Emotional, Self

  "Science, delusion and the appetite for wonder". www.edge.org. December 21, 1996.

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• If ever I left the House of Commons it would be because I wanted to spend more time on politics.

  Tony Benn

  House, Would Be, More Time

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• It's good to remember the unburied dead and the uncollected rubbish. Most of it can now be seen on the Labour benches in the House of Commons.

  Norman Tebbit

  House, Benches, Rubbish

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• On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act.

  Albert Bushnell Hart

  House, March, Resolution

  Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. (1909). “Epochs of American History”

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• 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.

  Jason Kenney

  House, Fundamentals, Dismay

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• I'm impatient not with the House of Commons as an institution, but with the way in which it is operated. This doesn't prove I don't believe in participatory democracy.

  Pierre Trudeau

  Believe, House, Democracy

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

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• It will be, I suppose, a foolhardy Government that tries to push through legislation making knowledge of both official languages one of the qualifications for election to the House of Commons or appointment to the Senate, but maybe it will have to come to this as a price we must pay for equality of the two great language groups of our founding fathers.

  Judy LaMarsh

  Father, Government, Two

  "Memoirs Of A Bird In A Gilded Cage" by Judy LaMarsh, Ch. 7, (p. 134), 1969.

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