parliament

   The eyes ofall England are onthis Parliament.If youdoin good earnest wish to see England hold the balance of Europe and to be indeed at the head of the Protestant interest, it will appear by your right improving the present opportunity.

—William III also called  William of Orange

We at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament, wherein we as head, and you as members, are conjoined and knit together into one body politic, so as whatsoever offence or injury is offered to the meanest member of the House is to be judged as done against our person and the whole Court of Parliament.

—Henry VIII

On the 5th November we began our Parliament, to which the King should have come in person but refrained, through a practice but that morning discovered. The plot was to have blown up the King†at oneinstanttohaveruinedthewhole estateand kingdom of England.

—Hoby, Sir Edward

It is Scotland's rightful heritage that its people should create a modern Parliament† This entire issue is above and beyond any political party.

—Connery, Sir Sean

CromwellsaidtotheLong Parliament whenhethought it wasno longer fitto conducttheaffairs of thenation,'You havesattoolong hereforanygood youhavebeendoing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!'

—Amery, Leo(pold) Charles Maurice Stennett

In the name of the Constitution,Cromwell took up arms, executed the king, dissolved Parliament, imprisoned some, and beheaded others.

—Stalin,Joseph originally Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili

Alcohol is a very necessaryarticle† It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.

—Shaw, George Bernard

There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with15th-century titles upholding19th-century prejudices.

—Ashdown, Baron

In the last Parliament, the House of Commons had more MPs called John than all the women MPs put together.

—Jowell,Tessa

Boys do now cry 'Kiss my Parliament!' instead of 'Kiss myarse!'so great and general a contempt is the Rump come to among all men, good and bad.

—Pepys, Samuel

The nation suspects that the regular ministerial majorities in Parliament are bought, and that the Crown hasmadea purchase oftheHousewiththemoneyofthe people. Hence the ready, tame and servile compliance to every royal verdict issued by Lord North† It is almost universally believed that this debt has been contracted in corrupting the representatives of the people.

—Whitbread, Samuel

   In this House, which is termed a place of free speech, there is nothing so necessary for the preservation of the Prince and State as free speech; and without it, it is a scorn and a mockery to call it a Parliament House, for in truth it is none but a very school of flatteryand dissimulation, and so fit a place to serve the devil and his angels in, and not to glorify God and benefit the Commonwealth.

—Wentworth, Peter

I could have transformed this greyassembly hall into an armed camp of Blackshirts, a bivouac for corpses. I could have nailed up the doors of Parliament.

—Mussolini, Benito also called Il Duce [the Leader]

   Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation.You choose a Member indeed; but when you have chosen him, heisnotthe Member for Bristol, but heisa Member of Parliament.

—Burke, Edmund

The day must come when the nation's whole scale of living must be reduced. If that day comes,Parliament must lay the burden equally on all classes.

—Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer

   The Parliament of England cannot have on earth so strong pillars and pregnant supporters of all their were always told there is one golden rule: no hanky panky in theTardis.

—Baillie, Robert

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new: That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do: For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heaven fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations'airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, Ulysses With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle- flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

—Tennyson

A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions mostly fools.

—Carlyle,Thomas

   People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country.

—William III also called  William of Orange

The Scottish Parliament which adjourned on 25 March in the year1707 is hereby reconvened.

—Ewing,Winnie

Why should it take three times longer to elect a Mayor for London as it does to set up an entire Scottish Parliament?

—Waterhouse, Keith Spencer

'There shall be a Scottish Parliament.' Through long years, those wordswere first a hope, then a belief, then a promise. Now they are a reality.

—Dewar, Donald Campbell

Congratulations and bouquets keep pouring in, as if the role of sexuality had been suddenly recognised by His Majesty, the interpretation of dreams confirmed by the Council of Ministers, and the necessity of the psychoanalytic therapy of hysteria carried by a two- thirds majority in Parliament.

—Freud, Sigmund