Partisan Quotes

The partisan when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions. ~ Socrates

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. ~ Matt Taibbi

The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons. ~ Kenneth Prewitt

It is not a small thing I want...but it is very important to the Kurds, to all Kurds. Perhaps it would be too easy to ask you to simply be a partisan of the Kurds in the counsels of your country, but it is more than that. We ask you to explain our situation so that all people in your country may understand and appreciate our struggle. It is the Kurd who will decide the direction and activity of his own political future, but a great deal of our hope will depend upon the final attitude of friendship or enmity from the powerful Englis . Perhaps all over the world there are primitive peoples like the Kurd, seeking independence, political expression, and material progress. There are certain things that we can do for ourselves, but so much depends upon the large countries. Their governments shape the primitive states by rich and powerful influence. Much of the responsibility for our situation therefore depends upon the people of your own country. If they apathetic and ignorant of our Kurdish aspirations; If they make no attempt to influence the direction of their own government in dealing with our affairs; then all will depend on ourselves alone. That would mean reluctant but necessary and bloody and terrible struggle because I would warn your Ministers that we cannot give up until we have achieved national sovereignty and our equal right among all people. It is therefore a vital and great service that I ask you, dear Brother, because our immediate hope of urgent success will depe ~ James Aldridge

I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces. ~ Dan Rather

Critics of Fox News have pointed out that Fox News does partisan propaganda, and there's ample evidence on a daily basis. ~ David Shuster

If we've learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources. ~ Ronald Reagan

Message is more important than money. Issues are more central than image. Strategy matters more than tactics. Positives work better than negatives. Substance is more salient than scandal. Issues are more powerful than image, and strategy more important than spin. The more partisan you are, the less effective you will be. ~ Dick Morris

Confronting the US made him [Hugo Chavez] a target for demonization. Partisan and/or lazy journalism exaggerated his faults, ignored his virtues, and downplayed the influence of strident and on occasion anti-democratic opponents. The flip side is his anti-imperialist posturing so dazzled his cheerleaders they overlooked his flaws, flaws which worsened over time, and they created their own caricature. ~ Rory Carroll

Nature is not a partisan, but out of her ample treasue house she produces children in infinite variety, of which she is equally the mother, and disowns none of them ... ~ James Anthony Froude

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. ~ Robert Coover

I was a little girl fighting as a partisan against Nazi-Fascism. ~ Oriana Fallaci

The road ahead may be difficult for all Australians, but we need not be divided on partisan lines. ~ Tony Whitlam

There's no such thing as a partisan base. ~ Stephanie Herseth

What more do I need to say? Conservative books sell. I can't help it if liberal books don't sell. ~ Newt Gingrich

All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves. ~ T. E. Hulme

We are now living in a post-Roosevelt, post-Reagan universe. What comes next will not be post-partisan, because faction is an intrinsic human impulse. ~ Jon Meacham

Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness. ~ James Lileks

I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order has been merely created to furnish our larders and our banquets. ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The main practical difficulty, with some at least of the Peace-makers, is how to carry themselves toward the undoers of peace, the disuniters of souls. Perhaps the most potent of these are not those powers of the church visible who care for canon and dogma more than for truth, and for the church more than for Christ; who take uniformity for unity; who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, nor knowing what spirit they are of; such men, I say, are perhaps neither the most active nor the most potent force working for the disintegration of the body of Christ.
I imagine also that neither are the party-liars of politics the worst foes to divine unity, ungenerous, and often knowingly falseas they are t their opponents, to whom they seem to have no desire to be honest and fair.
I think rather, they must be the babbling lairs of the social circle, and the faithless brothers and unloving sisters of disunited human families.
But why inquire?
Every self-assertion, every form of self-seeking however small or poor, world-noble or grotesque, is a separating and scattering force. And these forces are multitudinous, these points of radial repulsion are innumerable, because of the prevailing passion of mean souls to seem great, and feel important.
…the partisan of self will sometimes gnaw asunder the most precious of bonds, poisen whole broods of infant loves.
Such real schismatics go about, where not inventing evil, yet rejoicing in iniquity; mishearing; misrepre ~ George MacDonald

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn't know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not ~ Antonio Gramsci

Our job should be like any other forensic scientist's - we should be truth seekers who are not partisan, who do not have any interest in the outcome, who call it as we see it no matter the consequences. But it seems a lot easier for chemists and anthropologists and pathologists to take that neutral role than it does for psychiatrists. ~ Park Dietz

He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service. ~ Grover Cleveland

I'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about. ~ Edward Zigler

The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this we can't risk partisan bickering and political posturing.'Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work and we citizens also have to rise to the occasion. ~ Mitt Romney

I live, I am partisan. This is why I hate those who do not take sides; I hate those who are indifferent ~ Antonio Gramsci

Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarrelling with one another about the steering --every one is of opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and will further assert that it cannot be taught, and they are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary. They throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them; and if at any time they do not prevail, but others are preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard, and having first chained up the noble captain's senses with drink or some narcotic drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores; thus, eating and drinking, they proceed on their voyage in such a manner as might be expected of them. Him who is their partisan and cleverly aids them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own whether by force or persuasion, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman, and abuse the other sort of man, whom they call a good-for-nothing; but that the true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, and whatever else belongs to his art, if he intends to be really qualified for the comm ~ Plato

I really don't think there's a lack of good will between members of the parties. I go back a long way with a lot of Republicans, so I don't think it's personal. But there does seem to be a much greater gap in both the philosophy and emphasis on partisan victories as opposed to policy development. ~ John Yarmuth

I think he could have made most of the trips and gone to most of the fund-raisers if he would have avoided the partisan rhetoric and talked to the country as President in each of these appearances rather than to the narrow partisan audiences. ~ Robert Teeter

John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth. Most famed for his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton is celebrated as well for his eloquent treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica. Long considered the supreme English poet, Milton experienced a dip in popularity after attacks by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis in the mid 20th century; but with multiple societies and scholarly journals devoted to his study, Milton's reputation remains as strong as ever in the 21st century. Very soon after his death – and continuing to the present day – Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T.S. Eliot's belief that "of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry." Milton's radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of his complicated Latinate verse, alienated Eliot and other readers; yet by dint of the overriding influence of his poetry and personality on subsequent generations - particularly the Romantic movement - the man whom Samuel Johnson disparaged as "an acrimonious and surly republican" must be counted one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time. Source: Wikipedia ~ John Milton

I went to Washington several times at the request of different parties to talk about education reform. I used to always say I felt like I needed to take a shower after I left, because it was so partisan that I just really hated it. ~ Paul Sadler

I promised to have no partisan affiliation and no subsidy except advertising. ~ Benjamin Day

There's never a perfect bipartisan bill in the eyes of a partisan. ~ William J. Clinton

When a big event happens, people turn on to CNN, not only because they know there will be people there covering an event on the ground, but because they know we're going to cover it in a way that's non-partisan, that's not left or right. ~ Anderson Cooper

Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists. ~ Enoch Powell

That ideal had become as ossified as the statue of Benjamin Franklin up there. From New York to Los Angeles, American newspapers were yellow and stale before they even came off the press. Dog-beaten by a dwindling readership, financial losses and partisan attacks, editors had stripped them of their personality in an attempt to offend no one. And so there was no more reason to read them. Safety before Truth. Grammar over Guts. Winners before Losers. My eyes traveled down from Franklin to the iron sconces above the entrance. ~ Charlie LeDuff

I think that there was a lot of undisclosed money that came into South Dakota, driving a message to paint me as a Washington partisan, which I don't believe that I am, but it was a message that resonated, after pounding it away for a number of weeks. ~ Stephanie Herseth

At its worst, Washington is a place where name-calling partisan politics too often trumps policy. ~ Bernie Sanders

Due to the political nature of film, partisan film making, especially where the subject is close to the film makers hart, tend to be the norm, rather than the exception. ~ Ben Edwards

There's no point in arguing with partisan supporters. Their views are their identity. Nothing you can tell the most phlegmatic follower. ~ Michael Lewis

At what point do [progressives] take off our partisan blinders and start wondering whether a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq? ~ David Sirota

If you're anything like me, you don't make up your mind about important issues by doing original research, pounding over primary sources and coming to your own conclusions; you listen to people who claim to know what they're talking about - "experts" - and try to determine which of them is more credible. You do your best to gauge who's authentically well-informed and unbiased, who has an agenda and what it is - who's a corporate flack, a partisan hack, or a wacko. I believe that global warming is real and anthropogenic not because I've personally studied Antarctic ice core samples or run my own computer climate models, but because all the people who support the theory are climatologists with no evident investment in the issue, and all the people who dismiss it as alarmist claptrap are shills of the petro-chemical industry or just seem to like debunking things, from the Holocaust to the moon landing. We put our trust - our votes, our money, sometimes our lives - in someone else's authority. In other words, most of us decide not what to believe but whom to believe. And I say believe because for most people, such decisions are matters of faith rather than reason. ~ Tim Kreider

Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders). ~ Thomas E. Mann

In my mind, there is no reason public school reform should be a partisan issue. ~ Michael Bennet

I voted against the climate-change legislation. Not that I don't believe we should move to a clean-energy economy, and it can be good for South Dakota's economy to do so, but it was started out as a very partisan bill in the committee. ~ Stephanie Herseth

I'm often asked how I take the criticism directed my way. I have three answers: First, if you choose to be in public life, remember Eleanor Roosevelt's advice and grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros. Second, learn to take criticism seriously but not personally. Your critics can actually teach you lessons your friends can't or won't. I try to sort out the motivation for criticism, whether partisan, ideological, commercial, or sexist, analyze it to see what I might learn from it, and discard the rest. Third, there is a persistent double standard applied to women in politics - regarding clothes, body types, and of course hairstyles - that you can't let derail you. Smile and keep going. ~ Hillary Rodham Clinton

The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant. ~ Raymond Geuss

I've been the co-chair of the Non-Partisan Women's Caucus and vice-chair for several years, taking a leadership role in this women's organization. ~ Gwen Moore

Even as a partisan Republican, I'm not sure a 40-year run is healthy for either party. ~ Ed Gillespie

It's nice to say let's be bipartisan. But we're a partisan nation. We were raised as a partisan nation. ~ Colin Powell

He not only fumbled badly in his attempts at impromptu oratory en route to the capital, but worst of all, ended his journey in the dead of night, embarrassingly fearful for his safety, after encouraging unseemly partisan demonstrations in friendly Northern cities. He was too conspicuous. He was too sequestered. He was too careless. He was too calculating. He was too conciliatory. He was too coercive. He was too sloppy. ~ Harold Holzer

I will say that again in a different way: the persistent unethical and ignorant emphasis on secrecy and on making decisions for partisan advantage or to pay off campaign contributors and select insiders is not sustainable. We the People have an opportunity to embrace this manifesto of Open-Source Everything and bury 'rule of secrecy.' This is why I am optimistic about the future. ~ Robert David Steele

I avow myself the partisan of truth alone. ~ William Harvey

When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win. ~ Jonathan Haidt

Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides. ~ Richard J. Evans

When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"? ~ Jonah Goldberg

I am confident that this legislature will rise above partisan bickering, especially after the public promises its members made last fall, and that it will demonstrate a high capacity for civil service. ~ Charles Edison

First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals. ~ John Avlon

He who is as faithful to his principles as he is to himself is the true partisan. ~ William Hazlitt

I think our government has gotten so far off track that it's high time something like this happened. All of these partisan politicians. You can see where they've gotten us. They cultivated this cancer, fought senselessly over how they should treat it, and now they're shocked to find that it's malignant and spreading? I'll tell you how we need to treat it. We need to oust the sons-a-bitches and bring the control back to the people. We're going to have to start this whole country up from scratch, using the Constitution, of course. We need to stick a cork in all of these special interests and get back to doing what's best for us. We've got this moment in history to set things right. Does that make sense to you guys? ~ Nicholas Antinozzi

Even in Madison's day, the practice of gerrymandering for partisan advantage was familiar. In the late seventeen-eighties, there were claims that Patrick Henry had tried to gerrymander Madison himself out of the First Congress. The term was coined during Madison's Presidency, to mock Elbridge Gerry, the governor of Massachusetts, who in 1811 approved an election district that was said to look like a salamander. ~ Jeffrey Toobin

I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush. ~ George Soros

The administration still wants to govern from the far-left and that's going to produce kind a partisan result here in the Congress. ~ Mitch McConnell

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. ~ Michael Lewis

Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-. ~ Anthony Burgess

It's not uncommon for revolutions to stem from a radicalized group just outside the circle of power. That's what the French Revolution was all about; that's what the American Revolution was. The question is: Will all those groups, because of the nature of partisan polarization and ideological polarization, just fight each other? Or is there capacity to organize? ~ Chris Hayes

Leaning toward a certain party is one thing (Matthew did it, Simon did it, and Jesus allowed it), but it is important to see that a partisan spirit can actually run against the Spirit of God. If there ever was a partisan crowd in the Bible, it was the crowd that pressured Pilate to crucify Jesus instead of Barabbas. Barabbas, a true criminal, went free while Jesus, an innocent man, was executed after having his impeccable character assassinated. This is the essence of partisanship. Partisans inflate the best features of their party while inflating the worst features, real or contrived, of the other party. They ignore the weaknesses of their own party while dismissing the other party's strengths. I have good friends on both sides of the political aisle. I trust them. Many of them - on both sides - have a strong commitment to their faith. Because of this I grow perplexed when Christian men and women willingly participate in spin - ready, willing, and armed to follow the world in telling half-truths to promote their candidates, while telling more half-truths to demonize their opponents. Have we forgotten that a half-truth is the equivalent of a full lie? What's more, political spin is polarizing even within the community of faith. ~ Scott Sauls

Every citizen's vote should count in America, not just the votes of partisan insiders in the Electoral College. The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case. ~ Gene Green

I pointed out that the very proliferation of pseudo journalism these days, the cacophony of conjecture and partisan agendas and sensationalism that seem orchestrated above all to provoke and entertain, tended to leave me feeling as though I know less than ever what my government is doing in my name. Drinking, Alistair shrugged and nodded as if to concede: Yes, well, there's always the moronic inferno. ~ Lisa Halliday

Registering people to vote is not partisan activity. ~ Susan Bysiewicz

If we think that we can secure our country by just talking tough without acting tough and smart, then we will misunderstand this moment and miss its opportunities. If we think that we can use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent's patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics. ~ Barack Obama

We simply must look beyond partisan goals and find common ground as Americans. It is imperative that the Members of Congress recognize that partisanship will not serve the American people. ~ Michael Crapo

Incivility is a symptom, not the disease. We've always had partisan conflict in Congress, and we always will. Yet when I worked for a year (1970-71) on the staff of Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, this was a different place, more collegial, more sensitive to data, more concerned about all of the American people. I think because the for-profit media prizes conflict above cooperation and sound bites above analysis, politicians have learned to adapt to those tendencies. Consequently, our public debates are dumbed down as our problems grow more complex. ~ Tom Allen

Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort. ~ Anthony Trollope

If journalism is the first draft of history, then talk radio provides an early glimpse into how the meaning of political events will be spun for ideological and partisan purposes. ~ Jackson Katz

There were times, though, when the women came together on a partisan basis. [When we stopped] the privatization of Social Security during George Bush, we linked arms. ~ Barbara Mikulski

Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt ceiling. He has reached the debt ceiling before anyone expected. ~ Grover Norquist

Yet the extravagant enthusiasm for profit persisted among businessmen. In the spring of 1969 Senator Long [spoke out against] a partisan of the oil industry...[and] that further taxation of oil profits would be disastrous. Such taxes... would remove "all business inventive and lead to Thursday to Tuesday weekends, wife swapping and drinking." Without the lure of profit, work would thus become meaningless. Americans would become pagan again and evils would prevail much like those that had inflamed Captain Endicott three centuries earlier ~ Jason Epstein

North Carolina offers a window into what politics without guardrails looks like - and a possible glimpse into America's future. When partisan rivals become enemies, political competition descends into warfare, and our institutions turn into weapons. The result is a system hovering constantly on the brink of crisis. ~ Steven Levitsky

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited me to breakfast on the eighteenth. Five days before, she had issued a news release saying, "The president's strategy in Iraq has failed," and "The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the president's plan for an endless war in Iraq." With those comments as backdrop, at the breakfast I urged her to pass the defense appropriations bill before October and to pass the War Supplemental in total, not to mete it out a few weeks or months at a time. I reminded her that the president had approved Petraeus's recommendation for a change of mission in December and told her that Petraeus and Crocker had recommended a sustainable path forward that deserved broad bipartisan support. She politely made clear she wasn't interested. I wasn't surprised. After all, one wouldn't want facts and reality - not to mention the national interest - to intrude upon partisan politics, would one? ~ Robert M. Gates

Wells says that, "strange Mystery Men were dimly visible through a fog of baffling evasions and mis-statements, manipulating prices and exchanges. Prominent among these Mystery Men was a certain Mr. Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1935." Not surprisingly, this is the same Montagu Norman who was a rabid pre-war partisan of Hitler, and who participated with Hjalmar Schacht, with American intelligence, with Wall Street, and with the Rothschild/Warburg/Schiff banks in the creation of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. ~ Jim Keith

Welfare reform happened with reconciliation; half the Democrats voted for it. The Bush tax cuts happened with reconciliation; twelve Democratic Senators voted for it. You didn't have a real partisan issue on those times that it was used. ~ Kent Conrad

To call me a partisan hack is ludicrous. I am the least partisan person I know. ~ Tucker Carlson

After President Obama's election, efforts at othering Obama quickly became about smearing his non-partisan allies and ambassadors. ~ Christine Pelosi

I have got instincts that, I think, are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics, or not in that partisan way. ~ Nick Clegg

They were men linked more to one another, their schools, their own social class and their own concerns than they were linked to the country. Indeed, about one of them, Averell Harriman, there would always be a certain taint, as if somehow Averell were a little too partisan and too ambitious (Averell had wanted to be President whereas the rest of them knew that the real power lay in letting the President come to them; the President could take care of rail strikes, minimum wages and farm prices, and they would take care of national security). ~ David Halberstam

In the tired hand of a dying man, Theodore Senior had written: The 'Machine politicians' have shown their colors ... I feel sorry for the country however as it shows the power of partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests, and I feel for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time. ~ Edmund Morris

I never could be a partisan leader - a man of one idea. ~ Joshua Chamberlain

Not everybody believes in the possibility of political persuasion. Many people see political positions as expressions of innate personality traits - hard-wired into us either by our genes or by an irreversible process of socialization. Why should we waste time trying to be persuasive when people never really change their minds? This is a reasonable concern.

The idea that persuasion doesn't work comes from a bad application of good science. A substantial body of research suggests that our political beliefs are shaped by more or less fixed psychological characteristics ... Research like this, however, tells us about the difficulty of conversion, not persuasion. These are not the same things. We too often misrepresent the task of political persuasion by thinking of the most strident partisan we have ever encountered and imagining what it would take to turn that person into an equally strident partisan for the other side. This sort of Paul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus conversion rarely happens in politics. Most people don't change their fundamental values, and if we expect them to, we are going to be very disappointed.

But we usually don't need people to change their fundamental values in order to convince them to adopt a particular position. The fact that people have fundamental values makes it possible to persuade them by appealing to those values. But we have to find values that we really share. ~ Michael Austin

My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue and never make a national election any kind of referendum on Israel. ~ Alan Dershowitz

We've had periods of meanness in American politics. Actually, the dawn of partisan division in America was basically in George Washington's second term, when it was obvious that he would be the first and only consensus president. ~ William J. Clinton

In Washington, when you're a leader, you have to put aside partisan politics to do what's right for the people. ~ George Pataki

When you have strong views about how to approach thinking about the law, then that view is going to lead to certain results in certain situations. And so people seem to think this predictability is based on some kind of partisan political view. But it's not. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Arnold's notion of the intellectual as disinterested critic distinguished him from both Marx and Hegel. For Marx, the proper function of the intellectual was to be a partisan on behalf of the proletariat, criticizing bourgeois society for its fundamental, structural oppression. For Hegel, the role of the intellectual was to stand above particular group interests, and to bring to consciousness the ethical basis of modern, capitalist society, in the process creating standards by which to guide politics and culture. Arnold's conception of "aliens" has obvious affinities with this Hegelian image of the intellectual. But "disinterestedness" for Arnold had a rather different meaning. It implied the ability to free oneself from partisanship, to take a distanced enough view to be able to criticize the side of the issue to which one had been committed, as circumstances required. "Living by ideas" he wrote, means that "when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam-engine and can imagine no other--still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question..." The role of the intellectual, then, was to embody and encourage that quality of mind that allowed individuals to get some distance from their social, political, and economic milieu; to reflect critically, ~ Jerry Z. Muller

Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive. ~ Jonathan Haidt

The world order needs a major overhaul. ~ George Soros

I didn't remember much partisan division in Kansas when I was growing up. People here had been more mainstream then. A strong current of practical common sense and reasonableness had run through both Ward's and my childhoods. We recognized it in each other. ~ Julene Bair

The fundamental question pertaining to voting ethics which Christians must ask at this presidential election is this: "What are the binding principles established by God in the Bible for selecting a civil magistrate?" All other questions are secondary or irrelevant. Once this standard is determined it is our duty to wisely apply the principles and precepts to our American context and to obey. All attempts by Christians to obfuscate our duty to repair to "the standard" by sprinkling the debate with the theology of pragmatics and partisan politics is a loss to the Church because it means that we are more concerned with manipulating a political process then simply obeying the sovereign God ~ Douglas W. Phillips

I hate politics. It's slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don't like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you're not on my side, you're the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice. ~ Mark Cuban