commonwealth quotes

Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role. The attempt to playa separate power rolethat is, a role apart from Europe, based on a special relationship with the United States, on being the head of the Commonwealthis about to be played out. Her Majesty's Government is now attempting, wisely in my opinion, to re-enter Europe.

- Dean Gooderham Acheson
  Speech at West Point military academy, 5 Dec.  According to the NewYork Times, 23 Nov1969, Prime Minister Harold Wilson later countered,'Mr  Acheson is a distinguished figure who has lost a State Department and not yet found himself a role'.

   It is therefore our business carefully to cultivate in our minds, to rear to the most perfect vigour and maturity, every sort of generous and honest feeling that belongs to our nature. To bring the dispositions that are loved in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots, asnot toforget we are gentlemen.

- Edmund Burke
  Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.

Individuals pass like shadows, but the Commonwealth is fixed and stable.

- Edmund Burke
  Speech, House of Commons,11 Feb.

I thought that the best thing to do was to settle up these littlelocal difficulties, and thenturntothewider visionof the Commonwealth.

-Stockton
  On departing for a Commonwealth conference, after sacking several members of his Cabinet in his Night of the Long Knives,  Jan.

In my dreams is a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people: three in one and one in three. It is a commonwealth in which work is play and play is life: three in one and one in three. It is a temple in which the priest is the worshipper and the worshipper the worshipped: three in one and one in three. It is a godhead in which all life is human and all humanity divine: three in one and one in three. It is, in short, the dream of a madman.

- George Bernard Shaw
  Of Heaven, Keegan speaking. John Bull's Other Island, act 4.

   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.

- Peter Wentworth
  House of Commons, 8 Feb.