John Bercow
Fairness is not about statistical equality.Collection: Equality
Sally is my wife, but not my chattel or my property.
Even youngish men can acquire wisdom as time goes by.
I was proud to be a Tory Member of Parliament for twelve years, proud to represent Buckingham as a Tory, proud to have voted with my party 99% of the time as the record shows.
A legislature cannot be effective while suffering from public scorn.
I am seeking every day to restore faith in Parliament - to ensure we have a House of Commons which is representative, effective and reconnected to the people we serve.
There's no point in worrying about things you can't influence.
Lying to a committee is a very grave abuse, and there ought to be a clear punishment.
I think the state opening of Parliament is an incredibly important occasion, and broadly speaking, the way in which it's done is an invaluable tradition.
I'm not in the business of warning people.
I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong.
I've never been much given to little social cliques.
Possibly the fact that I was physically quite feeble, a relatively short little fellow, attracted me to that idea of a very authoritative and aggressive version of Conservative politics.
It is quite wrong for party conferences to be used as an excuse for the Commons not to sit. Conferences could be held at weekends.
It's a cowardly form of politics to use my spouse to beat me.
The Conservatives must realise that being sceptical is different from being phobic in what is an interdependent world.
I think the record shows that as Speaker, I have taken the lead in cleaning up politics.
I'm not psychic. I cannot know what is in the mind of particular public figures.
I said that if I hadn't been a politician, I'd have liked to be a barrister, or an academic. My beloved wife said: 'You'd be a very good barrister and a hopeless academic.' I said 'Why?' She said: 'Because you're not an original thinker.'
One consistent thing in an otherwise inconsistent career is that I've always been passionate about parliament.
If you asked me if I'd rather be Speaker or a very senior minister, I'd say Speaker.
I pride myself on being courteous to people, and trying to fashion good relations.
The prime minister's job is to captain his team, his party and his government.
I'm supremely uninterested as to what is written in many of the newspapers.
If someone is being very cheeky, it can be quite fun to deal with that situation.
I don't want to crawl over the entrails of past disputes.
I don't think that people are disinterested or uninterested in politics. I think very often they are disengaged from the formal political process. To some extent they are suspicious or even despairing of formal politics as a means to give expression and effect to what they want.
There are people who are just very, very sniffy and snobby and have always sort of looked down their noses at me.
I never aspired to be Speaker simply so I could say, 'I am the Speaker of the House of Commons,' and tell my children that.
When I first started out in politics I was, what you might describe as, a hard right Conservative.
There is no denying or hiding the fact that over the years I moved from well on the right of the Conservative Party, much much more to its left, and therefore to the centre of the poltical spectrum.
For far too long the House of Commons has been run as little more than a private club by and for gentleman amateurs.