Political Institution Quotes

The [Supreme] Court is no longer primarily a legal institution but rather a political and cultural power.

The House [of Representatives] has become not so much a legislative assembly as a huge panel from which committees are selected.

I deeply admire the American Presidency as a political and constitutional institution. I believe it is, one of the great, and remarkable innovations in our Constitution, and has been one of the most successful features of the Constitution in protecting the liberties of the American people.

There is a fundamental trade off between a sense of security and a standard of living…. The Congress is the only institution that we have that reflects the value tradeoffs of the American people.

Parliament was an institution of enormous standing when I was aspiring to go in. It isn't now.

The Congress plays a central role in our constitutional structure.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants.

Government is instituted for those who live under it.

The politicization of the presidency would pose a real threat to the institution and its function.

I have always been a House of Commons man.

I think that the candidates who are doing it [not debating] are doing a great disservice to the party. It's a sign of an unhealthy institution.

Congress, even with its frustrations, is the greatest instrument for justice and human welfare in the world.

The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.

The Senate is an unknowing world.

Only when the modern bureaucracy was highly developed could the complete abolition of the parish priests as a political institution be contemplated.

We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.

The house of Lords must be the only institution in the world which is kept efficient by the persistent absenteeism of most of its members.

We have things to say about Congress and all of that. I think we may have our magnum opus coming yet. It's a piece called "Leonard" that I'm very excited about, and I think we're going to see a side of Chris Pine that people haven't really seen yet. That's all I'm going to say, but I'm proud of it.

There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons.

There’s a sausage machine on Capitol Hill. We’ve given the sausage machine the right kind of ingredients. Now it’s up to the sausage machine to turn out the right kind of legislation.

Congress is best viewed from a distance - the farther the better - because up close, it is truly ugly.

I still cherish the memory of walking into the Parliament for the first time.

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.