House of Commons Quotes

If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.

Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help.

It excites world wonder in the Parliamentary countries that we should build a Chamber, starting afresh, which can only seat two-thirds of its Members. It is difficult to explain this to those who do not know our ways. They cannot easily be made to understand why we consider that the intensity, passion, intimacy, informality and spontaneity of our Debates constitute the personality of the House of Commons and endow it at once with its focus and its strength.

England is the mother of Parliaments.

Thus it comes about that (with some few exceptions) we have a House of Commons composed of a number of mediocrities who are content to echo the shibboleths of their party, to vote like sheep and to respond to the crack of the party whip.

George Brown ... represents the theory of Marxism in the House of Commons - but that of Groucho, not Karl.

The late Sir Horace Davy introduced a Bill, which proposed that father and mother should be acknowledged equal guardians of their children. This just and logical reform secured only nineteen votes in the House of Commons.

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.

There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting; though many of them would be better for a little whitewashing.

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.

We're allowed to say wonderful things about the Royal Family in the House of Commons. What you're not allowed to say is: anything that might be truthful, but that might upset them. So from time to time I've been pulled up because I've said things which I think are important.

… the scene of noise and uproar which the House of Commons now exhibits is perfectly disgusting. This used not to be the case in better, or at lease more gentlemanlike, times; no noises were permissible but the cheer and the cough, the former admitting every variety of intonation expressive of admiration, approbation, assent, denial, surprise, indignation, menace, sarcasm. Now all the musical skill of this instrument is lost and drowned in shouts, hootings, groans, noises of the most discordant that the human throat can emit, sticks and feet beating against the floor.

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.

What the government has to do, if it wants to govern for any length of time, is it must appeal primarily to the third parties in the House of Commons to get them to support it.

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.

I have always been a House of Commons man.

It is no part of my job as Chancellor of the Exchequer to put before the House of Commons proposals for the expenditure of public money. The function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as I understand it, is to resist all demands for expenditure made by his colleagues and, when he can no longer resist, to limit the concession to the barest point of acceptance.

There are more hooligans in the House of Commons than at a football match.

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.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail completely in the House of Lords.

I wouldn't take Father of the House even if I was offered it.

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.

I doubt whether patriotism can stand the ware and tear and temptation of the front benches in the House of Commons.

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.

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