Proportional Representation Quotes

You know," he added reflectively, "we've got a much easier job now than we should have had fifty years ago. If we'd had to modernise a country then it would have meant constitutional monarchy, bicameral legislature, proportional representation, women's suffrage, independent judicature, freedom of the press, referendums ... "
"What is all that?" asked the Emperor.
"Just a few ideas that have ceased to be modern. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions ... but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. ... ~ Jon Meacham

We have a Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales, both elected by fairer votes - involving proportional representation. ~ Charles Kennedy

Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and, at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously maintained that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle classes have simply used the parliamentary system to raise a protecting barrier against the pretensions of royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the people become conscious of their real interests, and the variety of their interests is growing, the system can no longer work. Therefore democrats of all countries vainly imagine various palliatives. The Referendum is tried and found to be a failure; proportional representation is spoken of, the representation of minorities, and other parliamentary Utopias. In a word, they strive to find what is not to be found, and after each new experiment they are bound to recognize that it was a failure; so that confidence in Representative Government vanishes more and more. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

Many Americans do not realize that we could institute proportional representation for most elections in the U.S. without amending the Constitution. In helping to educate the public about the potential for voting system reform, CVD can play a central role in a pro-democracy movement right here in America! ~ John Anderson

I myself share with the Conservative Party a profound dislike for such fandangles as proportional representation. ~ Hugh Dalton

There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause. ~ Cass Sunstein

Bisexuality is the proportional representation of sexuality in a world where most of us - straight or gay - operate a first-past-the-post system. ~ Mark Steyn

It may sound like I am making too much out of all this, but the only way you can allow a kid to truly dream is if you expand their idea of what is currently possible. A kid who has nothing, sees nothing, and is taught nothing can only dream of breakfast. They can only hope to get to the next moment successfully. I want more than that for my kids...just like my mom wanted more than that for me. And I want them to want more than that too. ~ W. Kamau Bell

I imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die. ~ Phillip Lopate

We on earth do not feel either the gravitational field of the sun or the centrifugal force caused by the earth's motion around the sun because the two forces balance each other, but this balance would be spoiled if one force was proportional to the mass of the objects on which it acts and the other was not; some objects might then fall off the earth into the sun and others could be thrown off the earth into interstellar space. ~ Steven Weinberg

I've never understood America,"said the king.
"Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government."
"They get along together, these governments?"
"Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism."
"So I have heard," said Pippin.
"Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states."
The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said.
"Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors d ~ John Steinbeck

Virtual reality is the representation of possible worlds and possible selves, with the aim of making them appear as real as possible - ideally, by creating a subjective sense of "presence" and full immersion in the user. ~ Thomas Metzinger

The amount of energy spent laughing at a joke should be directly proportional to the hierarchical status of the joke teller. ~ Scott Adams

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

Ever so subtly, without even alluding to the last obstacles preserved by earlier opinions that we now push out of our path, we effectively replace the goal of a discrimination-free society with the quite imcompatible goal of proportionate representation by race and by sex in the workplace. ~ Antonin Scalia

One of the reasons I always come back to representations of loneliness in plays, films, and literature is that they give us specific examples of the powerful hold that it has on us, and yet, paradoxically, by representing what can't really be represented, so to speak, they give us ways of going forward even as we fall apart. ~ Thomas L. Dumm

The plastic artist may or may not be concerned with presenting a superficial appearance of reality, but he is always concerned with the presentation - if not the representation - of the plastic values of reality. ~ Hans Hofmann

I like photography as a recording device. It's the best possible two-dimensional representation of 3D living things that we have. ~ Andrew Zuckerman

I love skyscrapers. Visiting cities lush with tall buildings has always been a treat for me. The implications of these immense towers are tremendous - a representation of the power of mind over matter. It never ceases to amaze me that within our minds exist the power to transform earthly materials into these colossal giants. For me, a walk among skyscrapers is a pleasant reminder of the boundless potential of human thought. ~ Todd William

Since January 2003, at the height of the debate on the possible unilateral strike against Iraq, I have advocated for a reinstatement of the military draft to ensure a more equitable representation of people making sacrifices in wars in which the United States is engaged. ~ Charles B. Rangel

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end. ~ Aristotle.

But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them? A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie. But when is this fault committed? Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes, - as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original. Yes, ~ Plato

...that's where love is revealed: in abandoning the outcome, casting the self aside, inviting the consequences that will come. Even if the love we offer to others is not received – which may be the definition of loneliness – that doesn't mean it ceases to exist, because real love ignores the cost, braves the darkness, lights the way. The true measure of the love within the human heart is inversely proportional to the price one is willing to pay to express it. ~ Jenna Brooks

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature. ~ Richard P. Feynman

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. ~ Abigail Adams

Fermi started to calculate on his own, saying nothing, and in a direct, simple way found the essential point. The ability of a centrifuge to separate U-235 from U-238 was proportional to its length and to the fourth power of the peripheral speed of its rotor. Karl ~ Gregory Benford

Acting is the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept. ~ Laurette Taylor

It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed. ~ Michael Foley

Speech is the representation of the mind, and writing is the representation of speech. ~ Aristotle.

All of the systems that present different worlds, planes of being and energy centers ultimately fail if you try to make them all-inclusive. They are symbolic representations of something that lies beyond the world of thought and analysis. ~ Frederick Lenz

And I remember in frequent discourses with my master concerning the nature of manhood, in other parts of the world, having occasion to talk of lying and false representation… For he argued thus; that the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts; now if any one said the thing which was not, these ends were defeated… …he leaves me worse than in ignorance, for I am led to believe a thing black when it is white, and short when it is long. ~ Jonathan Swift

Ever were the rich folk, the pashas of Calimport, praised for their philanthropy, when in fact, the gold they so charitably gave actually cost them nothing in terms of their own standard of living. A poor woman might take in an orphaned boy, without fanfare, though the proportional cost was surely much higher. But, heigh-ho, all must cheer for those philanthropists! ~ R.A. Salvatore

The alternation of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed. ~ Isaac Newton

The Golden Number is a mathematical definition of a proportional function which all of nature obeys, whether it be a mollusk shell, the leaves of plants, the proportions of the animal body, the human skeleton, or the ages of growth in man. ~ R. A. Schwaller De Lubicz

As a young woman in politics, it also gives me great pleasure to see additional female cabinet representation here today. You know, these are very high levels of representation for women around the cabinet table and I think that that's something that's very important to me. ~ Michelle Rempel

How can it be, in a country as strong and rich as this one, that tens of thousands of Americans who need legal representation are turned away every year because their government won't support the very program designed to help them? ~ Ron Wyden

The frame announces that between the part of reality that was cut away and this part there is a difference; and that this segment which the frame frames is an example of nature-as-representation, nature-as-sign. ~ Rosalind E. Krauss