Parliaments Quotes

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose and authorize a legislature is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society.

Congress is hard to deal with, dealing with, you know, multiple parliaments and commissions and unions and this and that and the other, that's very complicated.

Thou hast entrusted the reins of counsel into the hands of the representatives of the people. Thou, indeed, hast done well, for thereby the foundations of the edifice of thine affairs will be strengthened, and the hearts of all that are beneath thy shadow, whether high or low, will be tranquilized.

The people can never err more than in supporting that by multiplying their representatives beyond a certain limit, they strengthen the barrier against the government of a few.

A popular assembly without parties--500 isolated individuals--cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

The history of a nation is not in Parliaments and battlefields but in what people say to each other on fair days and high days, and in how they farm and quarrel and go on pilgrimage.

The position of Princes is no doubt difficult in these times, but it would be much less so if they would behave honorably and straightforwardly, giving the people gradually those privileges which would satisfy all the reasonable and well-intentioned, and would weaken the power of the Red Republicans; instead of that, reaction and a return to all the tyranny and oppression is the cry and the principle—and all papers and books are being seized and prohibited, as in the days of Metternich!..

Today, parliaments are more important because of the need of legitimacy, of the popular legitimacy, of public opinion legitimacy of politics. Parliaments are, at the end of the day, the only true legitimacy.

A significant disadvantage of the present system is that there is no direct relationship between the elected members and the electors … the member is only responsible to the party leadership or, worse still, to the party bureaucracy

I suspect that the great Continental powers will see a military Government at Paris with pleasure; they go rather far in their hatred of everything Parliamentary.

The protection of our liberties does not ultimately depend on parliaments or even the courts. It depends on the love of the people for liberty.

Weak parliaments render democratic governments ineffective and leave them vulnerable to authoritarian assaults.

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.

For more than 500 years -- since the rise of nation-states and parliaments -- a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power.

The reason why gold is so unpopular now and also why it was so popular in a bourgeois era is that it imposes restrictions upon governments or bureaucracies that are much more powerful than is parliamentary criticism.

We need to have a bigger and more significant role for national parliaments. There is not, in my view, a single European demos.

The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities,--how can the large majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be expected than that those below should dance?

I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity. I have been called to several employments in the nation - to serve in parliaments, - and ( because I would not be over tedious ) I did endeavour to discharge the duty of an honest man in those services, to God, and his people's interest, and of the commonwealth; having, when time was, a competent acceptation in the hearts of men, and some evidence thereof.

In all Christian kingdoms, you know that parliaments were in use anciently, by which those kingdoms were governed in a most flourishing manner; until the monarchs began to know their own strength, and, feeling the turbulent spirit [partisan bickering] of their parliaments, … began to stand on their prerogatives, and at last overthrew the parliaments …. Let us be careful to preserve the king's good opinion of parliaments.