speaker quotes

   The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there 270 arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

- CharlesJohn Huffam Dickens
  Hard Times, bk.1, ch.1.

   The speech is admirable, but the speaker is not to be trusted; for he has never been amid the blare of trumpets.

-Eudamidas   4c
Of a philosopher who had claimed that philosophers were the only good generals. Quoted in Plutarch  Apophthegmata Laconica, 220E (translated by F C Babbitt,1931).

Worst damnfool mistake I ever made was letting myself be elected Vice-President of the United States. Should have stuck†as Speaker of the House† Gave up the second most important job in Government foreight long years as Roosevelt's spare tire.

-John Nance Garner
  In the Saturday Evening Post, 2 Nov.

Mr Speaker,Ithink thenoble young manhas no business to make anyapology. He is a gentleman, and none such should be asked to make an apology, because no gentleman could mean to give offence.

- Sir Boyle Roche
c.1796  Debate on motion to expel Lord Edward Fitzgerald from Irish House of Commons, quoted in SirJonah Barrington Personal Sketches and Recollections of his ownTimes (1827).

What,Mr Speaker! and sowearetobeggarourselvesfor fear of vexing posterity! Now, I would ask the honourable gentleman, and still more honourable House, why should we put ourselves out of our way to doanything for posterity; for what has posterity done for us? SeeAddison 7:40.

- Sir Boyle Roche
Debate in Irish House of Commons, quoted in SirJonah Barrington Personal Sketches and Recollections of his ownTimes (1827).

His Majesty entered the House, and as he passed up towards the Chair, he cast his eye on the right hand near Ruskin the Bar of the House where Mr Pym used to sit; but His Majesty, not seeing him there (knowing him well) went up to the Chair and said,'By your leave, Mr Speaker, I must borrow your chair a little.'

-John Rushworth
  His account of the attempt made by Charles I to arrest five Members of Parliament on 4 Jan.

One can scarcely imagine a speaker at a meeting of a county medical society discussing the possible elimination of some disease by public health measures, and then qualifying his observations by the statement that many practitioners make a living out of treating the disease in question; and that unless the physicians are vigilant to prevent the adoption of such measures, this source of business will be taken from them.Yet speakers at barassociationmeetings arefrequently heard tomake similar observations about the effect of proposed reforms.

- ArthurJr Sutherland
  'A New Society and an Old Calling,' in the Cornell Law Quarterly.