QUOTES ON POLITICAL PARTIES
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Political parties are like poets, born, not made.
HENRY FORD, "Parties Are Born, Not Made," Ford Ideals
Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Timothy Pickering, Jul. 27, 1795
Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
GEORGE ORWELL, Politics and the English Language
The morality of a [political] party must grow out of the conscience and the participation of the voters.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, Autobiography
Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, The American Democrat
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
JOHN ADAMS, letter to Jonathan Jackson, Oct. 2, 1789
However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Mar. 6, 1956
I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to Thomas Jefferson, Jul. 6, 1796
It is sometimes easier to form a party than to attain by degrees the head of a party already formed.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
Of the two great political parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and error.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1825
He that espouses parties, can hardly divorce himself from their fate; and more fall with their party than rise with it.
WILLIAM PENN, Some Fruits of Solitude
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
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