Scottish Parliament Quotes

“I ken, when we had a King, and a chancellor and Parliament - men o' our ain, we could aye peeble them wi' stanes when they werena gude bairns - but naebody's nails can reach the length o' Lunnon.”
― Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian

“There is, however, a more fundamental and interesting issue behind the apparent receding popularity of the Parliament, and that relates to the 'ownership' of the institution. Put simply, whose Parliament is it anyway? This is a serious question which grows out of the long process of Home Rule. The failure of Westminster parties to deliver devolution - and let us remember that a majority voted yes in the 1979 referendum meant that it was left to civil society to agitate for the Parliament. The twent-year campaign since 1979 was waged by a motley crew of campaigners and civil associations from trade unions to churches and women's groups, all unelected, but all donning the mantel of speaking for Scotland. Some parliamentarians like to think that as elected representatives, they alone represent the nation, but that is not how the nation sees it. Parliament became the people's forum, on loan to the political class, as long as they treated it, and them, with some respect, given the partiality of poitics in the twenty-first century. Power sharing - between government, parliament and people - is a three-way system, and not the preserve of any single agent.”
― David McCrone, Creating a Scottish Parliament

“At the heart of the history of the Company of Scotland was a group of individuals who never travelled to Darien, who never felt the heat of the Central American jungle or smelled the stench of death in the huts of Caledonia, and as a result have not featured highly in the accounts of historians. These were the men and women who, in very large numbers for the period, became shareholders in the Company and provided the money to fund the venture. They spent the years from 1696 to 1707 on an emotional rollercoaster between ecstacy and despair, waiting expectantly for each crumb of news. An examination of who they were, and why they were willing in such numbers to invest in a joint-stock company in 1696, is of central importance not just to the history of the Company but also to explaining the passage of the Treaty of Union through the Scottish parliament in 1707.”
― Douglas Watt

“Miralles' parliament is therefore neither grand nor patrician. For those of us who work there, it feels more like a village - a natural continuation of the Royal Mile, with its marketplace in the Garden Lobby, and its nooks and crannies reflecting the vennels and closes of the Old Town of Edinburgh and the barrios of Barcelona.”
― George Reid, Creating a Scottish Parliament

“Would Scotland have built its Parliament if it had known then what it knows now? Probably not. Should it have done so? Indubitably yes. Many of the key decisions in the life of a nation depend less on careful and considered judgement, and more - more often than we like to admit - on happenstance, serendipity, and sheer bloody-mindedness. 'There shall be a Scottish Parliament. I like that.' said Donald Dewar, on whom the title father of the nation sat, like his suits, ill at ease. It was the combined vision of this awkward, accomplished and deeply cultured man with the quixotic, sometimes infuriating, dream of the Catalan, Enric Miralles, which gave it birth, and which left the rest of us working it through, defending its costs, filling in the spaces.”
― David McCrone, Creating a Scottish Parliament

“I imagine that a parliament building
should be organic like a university campus
A special kind of knowledge
produces
Parliament's need to have different
Places where to think
to talk
to walk”
― Enric Miralles

“This is about more than our politics and our laws. This is about who we are, how we carry ourselves. In the quiet moments today, we might hear some quiet echoes from the past.

The shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards;
The speech of the Mearns, with its soul in the land;
The discourse of the enlightenment, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were a light held to the intellectual life of Europe;
The wild cry of the Great Pipes;
And bacck to the distant cries of the battles of Bruce and Wallace.

Wisdom, Justice, Compassion, Integrity. Timeless values.
Honourable aspirations for this new form of democracy,
born on the cusp of a new century.

We are fallible. We will make mistakes. But we will never lose sight of what brought us here: the striving to do right by the people of Scotland; to respect their priorities; to better their lot; an to contribute to the commonweal.

I look forward to the days ahead when this Chamber will sound with debate, argument and passion when men and women from all over Scotland will meet to work together for a future built from the first principles of social justice.”
― Donald Dewar

“The politics of the Miralles imagination has made this Parliament an informal, restless place, seeking an experience of continual change (his realities like his personality could not abide being bored), anti-authority, continually open to new ideas and possibilities. It confounds expectations, it makes no predictions, suffers no illusion. It is architecture as landscape, not portrait - it is not readable in stylistic ways, it has no word traces of classical or medieval figures; even the simplicities of modernism cannot explain what is going on here. This is a thing shaped by the poetic manipulation of the circumstances of its context and its construction.”
― Alan Balfour, Creating a Scottish Parliament

“Yet here he has consciously denied the Parliament of Scotland a familiar consumable image. When a lesser architect with a less wise client could have contrived a form, an image that could have popularised the project and the mission of government (playing with the stereotypes of Scottish history and charcater), Miralles has given a form to Parliament devoid of symbols (at least easily recognised symbols), devoid of answers or illusions, its form representing nothing but its own nature...

...the Parliament seems to be an object outside of history, a place speaking only of the circumstances of its own nature and use... the architect of the Scottish Parliament has created an object promising nothing but itself. At this time and place in Scottish history and to a public wary of the easy promises of politicians, it is too early to say anything. ...what the Parliament will symbolise will be formed in the events of the history it makes, formed and reformed over the centuries in response to the laws made within it and its relation to the changing idea of Scotland. It is not shaped to be loved, to be immediately attractive, to make promises it cannot keep, to toy with vulgar myths or to play with representations of history or culture, and it may never be comfortable.”
― Alan Balfour, Creating a Scottish Parliament

“It is possible that John Major... will be able to suspend the battle for Scotland with an armistice on Unionist terms. But my guess is that he will not be able to bring about permanent political peace. To do that would require an unpredicted and irreversible shift in Scottish feeling - a shrugging off of real history and a retreat from real politics altogether... A Scotland genuinely at ease with itself would be an argumentative, grown-up Scotland with a lively parliament as well as a strong economy - a conscience and a tongue, as well as limbs and a body. And when it does speak, its voice will be sharp and fresh. And its views will perhaps surprise us.”
― Andrew Marr, The Battle for Scotland