Parliamentary Quotes - Page 4

• That one never asks a question unless he knows the answer is basic to parliamentary questioning.

  John Diefenbaker

  Answers, Questioning, Knows

  John George Diefenbaker (1982). “The Wit & Wisdom of John Diefenbaker”, Hurtig Trade

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• I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Party, Believe, Government

  Speech at Manchester, 3 April 1872, in 'The Times' 4 April 1872

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• There are cycles in American politics. US cycles are even more pronounced because we Americans have a totally entrepreneurial presidential system. We don't have parliamentary opposition parties with a shadow prime minister and shadow cabinets. Every four years, the opposition reinvents itself.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Party, Years, Presidential

  "Obama Is Average". Interview with Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. October 26, 2009.

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• Christians living in a democracy should always vote if they can. If they cannot in conscience bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates on offer (in the UK quite often there are several candidates for a parliamentary seat) they might consider deliberately spoiling the ballot paper as a sad protest which still says 'but I believe in being involved'.

  N. T. Wright

  Christian, Believe, Democracy

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• I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term.

  Jim Bolger

  Government, Democracy, Election

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• The U.S. views Morocco as an important friend, and we applaud your political and economic reforms that culminated with the recent parliamentary elections that were widely reported to have been conducted in a fair and open manner.

  Donald Evans

  Views, Political, Important

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• We could not have parliamentary sovereignty with a European Parliament.

  Hugh Gaitskell

  Parliament, Sovereignty

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• Fundamental questions are being asked about the future of the Eurozone and therefore the shape of the EU itself. Opportunities to advance our national interest are clearly becoming apparent. We should focus on how to make the most of this, not pursue a parliamentary process for a multiple choice referendum.

  David Cameron

  Opportunity, Multiple Choice, Choices

  House of Commons, Oral Answers to Questions, www.publications.parliament.uk. October 24, 2011.

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• Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.

  Martin Schulz

  Decision, Democracy, Germany

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

  Lord Acton

  Teaching, Government, Political

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.59, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.

  Stockwell Day

  Empires, Canada, Cabinets

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• We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

  David Frum

  Decision, Leader, Conservative

  "David Frum On Republicans And Health Care". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. April 1, 2010.

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• Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Race, Government

  "What's Happening in America" (1966)

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• To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Crush, Real, Years

  Vladimir Lenin (2017). “The State And Revolution (Annotated)”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Parliamentary committees are becoming more independent, tactics are becoming more sophisticated, and industries that don't want to be bushwhacked by some damaging legislative amendment will have to spend more time and money watching the Hill.

  John Ibbitson

  Independent, Political, Tactics

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• We discovered that in connection with these figures the German national simpletons and money-grubbers of the Frankfurt parliamentary swamp always counted as Germans the Polish Jews as well, although this dirtiest of all races, neither by its jargon nor by its descent, but at most only through its lust for profit, could have any relation of kinship with Frankfurt.

  Friedrich Engels

  Race, Lust, Connections

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• Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is

  Tony Benn

  Team, Mean, Essence

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• If [Respulicans] can't get rid of [Obamacare], they're going to have to tell their base, we've been lying to you for the last five years. So they're willing to go to almost any extent to do that. That's unusual, in fact I think it's unique in the history of modern parliamentary systems. And it's very dangerous for the country and for the world.

  Noam Chomsky

  Country, Lying, Unique

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence.

  Albert Bushnell Hart

  Effort, Growth, Resistance

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

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• It is the soldier and the army, not parliamentary majorities and decisions, that have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.

  Wilhelm II

  Army, Decision, Soldier

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• I think it's perfectly possible for us to stay outside of power politics, or parliamentary politics, and speak about things like the American hegemony in the region or speak about the unjust war on terror that's been brought to our borders.

  Fatima Bhutto

  War, Thinking, Borders

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• It is difficult to find another branch of knowledge where a small amount of study produces such great results in increased efficiency in a country where the people rule, as in parliamentary law.

  Henry Martyn Robert

  Country, Law, People

  Henry Martyn Robert (2000). “Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised”, Da Capo Press

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• The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'.

  Arundhati Roy

  Writing, Organization, Arrogance

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• Oswald Mosley`s movement, it was a big movement. It was obviously anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, it was populist. Mosley wanted to replace the parliamentary system of government in Britain with a government that was based on business interests, that was based on the idea that business interests were the real interests of that country and business interests.
  and reorganizing the government to serve business interests, that would be a way to get stuff done faster and more efficiently.

  Rachel Maddow

  Country, Real, Ideas

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• It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.

  Tony Benn

  People, Political, Democracy

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