Bob Ainsworth Quotes

As for life within a Legislature,— who can tell how warped and bent and twisted, and accommodated to the exigencies of party struggle become the faculties of belief?

Majorities without discipline are not majorities.

The Republicans definitely want to fight. They are just not sure what they want to fight about.

When Margaret Thatcher was leader, she and Michael Heseltine were hardly soulmates, but she would not have allowed personal rivalry to take the heat off the Labour Party, whose own deep internal divisions are buried in other news now, nor would she have countenanced any attempt to have a show trial.

A Labour party is not a debating club, it is a party of action.

I vote Labour and can't begin to acknowledge anything good that comes from a Tory.

Political parties don't work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.

When I was with the Labor Party, I'd get into trouble because the party bosses determined that some of what I wrote, or proposed to write about, wasn't conducive to their policies or to electoral success.

We too often prefer the individual thrill to collective responsibility.

No member shall be bound upon questions involving a construction of the Constitution of the United States or upon which he made contrary pledges to his constituents prior to his election or received contrary instructions by resolutions or platform from his nominating authority.

There is little leadership or followership on the Hill.

The mission of parties is to keep the people divided into factions, that they may be unable to do anything for themselves.

Parliamentarianism is nauseating to anyone who has ever seen it at close range.

In the field of actual politics, parties are a necessity and organization is essential. It is the duty of the citizen, therefore, to support the party that stands for right policies and to adhere closely to its official organization. Loyalty should be rewarded by positions within the gift of the party; and disloyalty should be looked upon as politician treason.

The work of a Russian parliamentarian is very much like the work of an American congressman. It's mainly affecting the policymaking of the government

What is the basic unit of "self" in the expression "self-government?" How large does your group have to be before it can be a government unto itself? In fact, do you have to be part of a group at all?

As a new member (of Parliament) you will also be instructed in the details of what is expected from you as a backbencher…. It will be made clear to you that your role in the decision-making process is to raise your hand when you are told to and to occupy your seat in the house when it is required.

Believing as I do in political parties, I had rather that the party ... should, in its conferences, make a declaration than to assume a leadership or take an individual position on the question.

Political controversies are never entered into with any wish to gain knowledge, but only a triumph for the party.

For about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was [earlier] condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin

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.

It seems eternally forgotten, that men, in their collective capacity as nations, may be, and often are, guilty of the same follies, faults, and crimes, that they can commit as individuals in the common relations of social life; that they may be just as ill-humored, or resentful, or unreasonable, or ferocious, or wicked; that their good or bad passions enter with them into cabinets, and senates, and public meetings, just as they do into drawing-rooms, or studies, or their family dining-rooms.

Societies organized for the interplay of individual self-interest can collapse into manic tribalism, if not nihilistic violence.

Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as ends of or actions by 'groups,' 'collectives,' or 'States,' which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals.

The last thing you want to do is go up against someone in your own party and certainly your own president.