Politicians From Scotland

"I'm happy to work with anybody, male or female, to try to stop Brexit"

"If I am elected, there may be an opportunity to change the tone for the better."

"A discriminatory and shameful piece of legislation that was imposed on Scotland by Westminster will today be repealed by the Scottish parliament ahead of other parts of the UK. That says something about the state of Scotland that we can all be proud of."

"I have opposed Trident and nuclear weapons for all of my political life - I even joined CND before becoming a member of the SNP."

"There was this assumption that I took a hard-nosed decision to prioritise a career over children. Women should not be judged for the reasons they have or don't have children."

"I believe both Scotland and the UK should stay in the EU. Scotland benefits from being part of the EU, and the EU benefits from having Scotland a part of it. No SNP parliamentarian has expressed a desire to campaign for the out campaign - though they are not prevented from doing so. I am determined to make the positive case for continued membership in a reformed EU."

"[The SNP will] work with anybody at Westminster to try to stop Brexit, and avert the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit."

"Shutting down parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit - which will do untold and lasting damage to the country against the wishes of MPs - is not democracy, it is dictatorship."

"The expression of negative emotions gives rise to endless pain and suffering."

"When no man steps forward to meet a need, a woman will"

"Women really do rule the world, they just haven't figure it yet. When they do, and they will, we're all in big trouble."

"I may have been wrong, but I was never in doubt"

"The first quality of a leader of people – always the first quality – is a devotion to truth."

"Some men work to maintain others who labour not. That is unjust."

"From praise comes joy, from joy – strength, from strength – virtue, from virtue – purity and from purity comes realization of one’s full potential."

"It became very clear to me that there was such a thing as truth and there was such a thing as justice, and that they could be found and, being found, could be taught. It seemed to me that that was the most valuable thing that one could pursue. So I resolved to pursue this when I was twenty-one."

"Clearly, the power of the lender to command interest has nothing to do with the use to which the loan is put. Whether the borrower uses it to build a factory or acquire a dwelling house, whether he spends it on tools of his trade or gambling on horses, will make no difference… The coupling of interest with capital has been an unfortunate error prolific in its progeny of falsehoods. It arises from confusing the power to exact payment for loans with the use to which some of the loans are put… It gives to the idea of a loan a quality it should not possess, a suggestion of productiveness and of social benefit, obscuring the indebtedness and dependence which the loan so plainly advertises."

"The man who is in love with his work will not degrade it for his customer, but while satisfying his customer will honour himself. Thus his desires will be ordered so that he puts working towards finding and following his calling first, and pleasing his customers, second. By this his customers will gain, for he will give of his best; but he will gain more, for he will be laying the foundation of a full life’. This requires great confidence."

"A people that have become insensate of all that is really beautiful, are likewise indifferent to the appeals of the idealist."

"Parliamentary time, can be wasted in kid-glove politics and nothing effective be done. I came to this House desiring to do something definitely along the lines of changing the law in some directions and not with the mere idea of becoming a gentleman in a parliamentary sense."

"Art has come to be regarded as a form of amusement which can only be indulged in by men of great wealth....Thus art which is the soul of every democracy finds no place in the workaday existence"

"Art is not the plaything of the wealthy, but is the spirit of beauty which permeates the whole of Nature, and gives forth her message to all who can really appreciate it, make it their own, and attach their various artistic meanings to it."

"Whether it be politics, philosophy, religion or anything else, the once cardinal characteristic of truth is simplicity. The greatest truths that that man ever heard where spoken in the language of simplicity in the streets of Jerusalem. Simplicity and truth stand together, and whenever you get complexity, beware, because there is a falsity somewhere."

"It does not matter where you look or what examples you select, you will see that every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself."

"The greatness of an artist depends on selecting and interpreting whatever phase in Nature may appeal to his sense of beauty."

"Wealth owes its existence to labour, not labour to wealth"

"My own experience was too bitter to ever forget it. I had a mother who tried to rear a family, but met with disaster. There is nothing more terrible than when poverty strikes a house and those who are in it know there is a better life than the one they are living. I shall never forget when the demand for rates was knocking at our door. We could have managed to pay the high rental, but when the rates came on top of it, it plunged our household into absolute misery."

"The home is the place where the woman has to bring forth her children and the place in which the little children touch the knee and ask the first question and receive the first answer. It is the home, as I said before, that marks the beginning of the spiritual development of the race."

"That frivolous young widow ought to have paid for the solace she declared so often she found in books. "I must read to forget." All very well, but she should not forget to pay for the means of forgetfulness. The waters of Lethe may be waters bought without money and without price, but my books ought to be paid for in cash. (p. 178)"

"Anarchism being immediately impracticable, let us have a government which governs as little as possible. Lord Melbourne's attitude of mind should be commended for imitation to all Prime Ministers. On being pressed by less wise members of his Cabinet to further certain legislation, he replied, "Must we really do something – why not let well alone?" (pp. 119–20)"

"The world is so full of wonderful things that at this stage in its history there would seem to be no justification for aught else than that we should just wonder and give thanks. (p. 231)"

"A cat is the ideal literary companion. A wife, I am sure, cannot compare except to her disadvantage. A dog is out of the question. It may do at a butcher's – it would be out of place in a bookseller's. A cat for a bookseller is a different creature temperamentally from the same animal at a fishmonger's or a baker's. In these shops the cat is a useful animal – I suppose it is employed to eat fish entrails or to keep down rats and mice – but in my shop its function is that of a familiar. It is at once decorative – contemplative – philosophical, and it begets in me great calm and contentment. (p. 48)"

"A fair exchange is so difficult to understand. How much do these inscrutable customers of mine desire my books? What would be a fair exchange? There are no balances in which such bargains can be weighed, for I don't think I ever parted with any book from all my stock but with a feeling of regret – without a sense of loss – even although I knew that I might replace the dear departed with another by return of post from the publishers. (pp. 34–35)"

"A wicked generation seeketh ever some new thing and the publishers must publish and the bookseller must book-sell in order to live. (p. 56)"

"War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge that once one's mind is adjusted to the worst that can happen – and that is a pretty bad and bloody wound or swift and sudden death – one settled down to existence as an Infantryman. Man is an adaptable animal – I acknowledge that myself. I adapted myself more easily to the environment of the trenches with its lice, filth, heat, stench, flies, dysentery, danger – I adapted myself to these more successfully, I repeat, than I have been able to adapt myself to this life as a shopkeeper. (p. 239)"

"My arrangement of my shelves may earn me a reputation for untidiness among the unthinking, but I am indifferent to these. From natural laziness – if you like – from sheer inability to discover any congruity between one book and another – I will not classify. There they are – as they come – as they go – in serried shelves – all happy with the fortuity of things – there are my books from the lowest shelf – to reach which the seeker must go (as he ought) on bended knees – to "the dust and silence of the upper shelf," as Lord Macaulay put it – there they are – awaiting the touch of the discerning hand and the light of the critical eye. The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Y. Darling, Robert Grant & Son Ltd, Edinburgh, 1947, p. 28."

"I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone. (p. 30)"

"I replace Hergesheimer's book and feel again the immensity of my little business – how it makes its master willy-nilly a veritable time-traveller though he never leaves his shop! Where is there a day's work that can connect Pliny and Hergesheimer as mine has done without an effort this afternoon? (p. 31)"

"His Translation is pretty near to the Original; tho' not so close, as [its] Brevity would make one imagine; and it sufficiently appears that he had a right Taste of Poetry in general, and of Virgil's in particular. He shews a true Spirit; and in many Places is very beautiful."

"The late Earl of Lauderdale sent me over his new translation of the Æneis, which he had ended before I ingag'd in the same design. Neither did I then intend it; but, some proposals being afterwards made me by my bookseller, I desir'd his Lordship's leave that I might accept them, which he freely granted; and I have his letter to shew for that permission. He resolv'd to have printed his work; which he might have done two years before I could publish mine; and had perform'd it, if death had not prevented him. But having his manuscript in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted of my author's sense; for no man understood Virgil better than that learned nobleman. His friends, I hear, have yet another and more correct copy of that translation by them, which had they pleas'd to have given the public, the judges must have been convic'd that I have not flatter'd him. Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, ..."

"Infernal Gods, who rule the Shades below, Chaos and Phlegethon, ye Realms of Woe, Grant what I've heard I may to light expose, Secrets which Earth, and Night, and Hell inclose."

"The names alone of Vicars and Ogilby (the latter of whom has equally violated the Muse of Homer and of Virgil) will supersede the necessity of any further notice of their performances: but the work of Lord Lauderdale is of a much higher character, and is entitled to considerable respect. Though finished before Dryden commenced his Virgilian undertaking, its publication was subsequent to that great man's; and did not take place till after the decease of its noble author, when it was offered to his memory by the just regard of his family. Dryden, to whom it was communicated in MS. by Lord Lauderdale, availed himself very largely of its beauties; having transplanted from it not fewer than three hundred and seventy entire verses into his own page, beside more than double that number, which he has made his own at the expense of no very laborious variation."

"You've got a Leave population and a Remain Parliament."

"a customs union means no independent trade policy"

"Parliament has not got the right to hijack the Brexit process because Parliament has said to the people of this country: 'We make a contract with you, you will make the decision and we will honour it.' What we are now getting are some of those who were always absolutely opposed to the result of the referendum, trying to hijack Brexit and, in fact, steal the result from the people."

"We don't want there to be a hard border but the United Kingdom is going to be leaving the single market and customs union."

"[Talks would only be complicated if the] European elite tried to punish Britain for having the audacity to use our legal rights to leave the European Union"

"There is a 60‑40 chance of no-deal Brexit."

"To attempt to have a delay mechanism in order to thwart the process of Brexit itself is actually politically completely unacceptable"

"The free trade agreement that we will have to do with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history.../ /....The only reason that we wouldn’t come to a free and open agreement is because politics gets in the way of economics."