Tan Cheng Bock Quotes

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

My personal view is always I'm in favour of anything that gives parliament a greater say. That's after all what we were elected for.

At Al Jazeera, we are getting our local Somalis, Yemenis and Sudanese, local correspondents from within the society, who understand much better than the people who come from overseas. We will get a much better insight.

The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation. It was not instituted to be a control upon the people, as of late it has been taught

What a jolly awakening there will be some few years hence, when the inevitable argument of experience will show us a nation contradicting itself through the voices of its chosen representatives!

Burke said there were three estates in Parliament; but in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

The Members of the Parliament shall be bound solely by their own conscience and not by any directions given by their electors.

In England, a Majority of Citizens does not elect the Majority of Representatives.

Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage and Votes by Ballot.

… once you acknowledge the fact that Congress is after all made up of citizens elected to represent all of us, you must have some faith in their framing common sense laws.

I do not think it is possible for anyone, not even the leaders of a political organization, really to know in detail the exact situation in every locality. That is why we hold primaries, so that the people who live in the locality may have the opportunity to choose the best man as they see him and know him.

The EU suffers from … a structural democratic deficit. Of its seven institutions, just one—the European Parliament—is directly elected by the people, and it cannot initiate legislation.

Most people are generally satisfied with their representative.

I work with the people in the piazza, where there is reality. Here in Parliament, often there is a mystification of reality. They are not representatives of the people. They represent themselves and their own interests.

At the federal level, as a member of Congress, you have one vote out of 435, and in the Senate, it's one out of 100. So, the ability to get some stuff done exists as a much larger opportunity at a local level than in the federal government.

I enjoyed Parliament being a proper elected MP.

Sorry, but we live in a democracy and the Government has to be responsive to Parliament.

It's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal... People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked. That includes women. Most especially women.

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

Parliaments are in all cases to declare what is good for the whole; but it is not the declaration of parliament that makes it so.

In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

I learned just by going around. I know all about Kleenex factories, and all sorts of things.

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

There is nothing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens doing the daily work of democracy, and no problem too great to tackle with the power of active citizenship.