“The party is Hitler, Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler! Sieg heil!”
Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) German Nazi leader
At Nuremberg, 1934
A collection of quotes on the topic of party, people, politics, doing.
“The party is Hitler, Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler! Sieg heil!”
Rudolf Hess (1894–1987) German Nazi leader
At Nuremberg, 1934
“My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”
Manuel L. Quezon (1878–1944) president of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944
As quoted in John Gunther's Inside Asia. (1939)
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932)<br><br> / 1930s
Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist
On her opposition to the construction of a skyscraper in Nairobi, Kenya, as quoted in the article Wangari Maathai:"You Strike The Woman ..." by Priscilla Sears in the quarterly In Context #28 (Spring 1991)
Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June
"Wanda June"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Context: Hello, I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up my cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I'm glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have gone to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy — the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time — and drink beer.
Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!
Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video
Nicki Minaj (1982) Trinidadian-born American singer, rapper and actress
Source: 15 September 2021 tweet https://twitter.com/NICKIMINAJ/status/1438256221660663812
Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician
Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher
Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
“The young man who joins a political party is a traitor to his generation and to his race.”
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 11, p. 179
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Variations of this piece have also been misattributed to Andy Rooney and Woody Allen. The original source is a variation on a piece by Sean Morey. ( "snopes.com: Andy Rooney on Everything", Snopes.com, 2012-09-09 http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney3.asp, ) <br class="br">Misattributed
Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader
they have the same principles under varying colors, are equally corrupt and are one in their subservience to capital and their hostility to labor.
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Mitski (1990) Japanese-American singer-songwriter
Laurel Hell <br class="br">Source: On how her personal life differs from her onstage persona in Mitski Had to Quit Music to Love It” https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mitski-new-album-laurel-hell-cover-story-1272973/ in Rolling Stone (2021 Dec 27)
Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat
Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)
Tom Kenny (1962) American actor
Interview: Tom Kenny talks voicing SpongeBob Squarepants and 'Mr. Show' http://www.metro.us/entertainment/interview-tom-kenny-talks-voicing-spongebob-squarepants-and-mr-show/zsJoba---UspN3mmMXb2BE (February 2, 2015)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845). <br class="br">1840s
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist
Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Autumn 1872)
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"As I Please," Tribune (26 January 1945)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup> <br class="br">"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
Dated 16 October 1928
Diary excerpts
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In Russian: Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса. <br class="br">Said in 1923, as quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary http://www.panrus.com/books/details.php?langID=1&bookID=5905 (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (Борис Бажанов. Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина). (Text online in Russian) http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt. <br class="br">Variant (loose) translation: The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. <br class="br">Contemporary witnesses
Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) Indian politician
Page=8
Narrow-majority’ and ‘Bow-and-agree’: Public Attitudes Towards the Elections of the First Asian MPs in Britain, Dadabhai Naoroji and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree, 1885-1906
Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman
Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
Disputed
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Speech in Washington D.C., June 30, 1975; Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom http://www.archive.org/details/SolzhenitsynTheVoiceOfFreedom, p. 30.
Rafael Correa (1963) 45th President of Ecuador
22 May 2012, interview The Julian Assange Show, Russia Today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvUwC5JTAJY&t=18m43s
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
§ 4
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
They are sometimes at variance, and I know not whether their mutual hostility is not the only security of human happiness. But they are forever struggling for an alliance with each other; and, when they are united, truth, reason, honor, justice, gratitude, and humanity itself in combination are no match for the coalition. Upon the maturest reflection of a long experience, I am much inclined to believe that fashion is the worst of all tyrants, because he is the original source, cause, preserver, and supporter of all others. <br class="br"> Letter to Samuel B. Malcolm (6 August 1812), Quincy. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2127#Adams_1431-10_87 <br class="br">1810s
George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: The workers' militias, based on the trade unions and each composed of people of approximately the same political opinions, had the effect of canalizing into one place all the most revolutionary sentiment in the country. I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragón one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the word 'comrade' stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug. One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy 'proving' that Socialism means no more than a planned state—capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the 'mystique' of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all. And it was here that those few months in the militia were valuable to me.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Speech in Taunton (28 April 1835), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 286
1830s
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
“This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here.”
Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies
Source: Lords and Ladies
“Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil
Variant: In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Source: Beyond Good and Evil
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
18 December 1831
Table Talk (1821–1834)
“Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.”
James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright
Jeremy Hardy (1961–2019) British comedian
The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, July 1997 (rebroadcast on BBC 7, 23 July 1999)
Variant: It seems a shallow observation, but… the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?
Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist
When asked how he addressed accusations of property destruction as being a violent act. Taken from an interview given to the environmentalist magazine, Resistance: Journal of the Earth Liberation Movement http://www.resistancemagazine.org/
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx
Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)
Specters of Marx (1993)
Charan Singh (1902–1987) prime minister of India
His reaction to the abolition of princes’ Privy purses by Indira Gandhi, p. 206
Profiles of Indian Prime Ministers
"The Party's Crashing Us," from of Montreal's Sunlandic Twins (2005)
Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War
Letter to General James Longstreet (29 October 1867), as quoted in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1924), p. 269.
1860s
Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China
As quoted in "Opinion: Corruption as China's top priority" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/06/world/asia/florcruz-china-corruption in cnn.com (7 January 2013).
Michel Bréal (1832–1915) French philologist
Source: Essai de semantique, 1897, p. 104-5 ; as cited in: Schaff (1962:14).
Fatima Jinnah (1893–1967) Pakistani dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman and one of the leading founders of Pakistan
Address to Zenana Muslim League, at Curzon Hall of Dhaka, 23 March 1948[citation needed]
Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer
http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
"Platform Insincerity" in The Outlook, Vol. 101, No. 13 (27 July 1912), p. 660
1910s
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.7
“It is of the utmost danger to society to make it (religion) a party in political disputes.”
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (29 October 1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 289.
Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
A speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin (10 November 1933) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler_audio.shtml <br class="br">1930s
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister
So sind die Parteien der Demokratie: Geschäftsgruppen! Weiter nichts. Weltanschauung? Was ist das für ein reaktionärer Begriff? Ehre, Treue, Glauben, Überzeugung? Mann, sie sind von Gestern!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2016, Presidential transition of Donald Trump (November 2016)
Xi Jinping (1953) General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of China
As quoted during Xi’s inspection tour of China Central Television (CCTV) and People’s Daily on 19 February 2016. <br class="br"> "Another View: Communist Party's loyal mouthpieces" http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2016/02/24/another-view-communist-partys-loyal-mouthpieces/ab4kbuk/, Daily Chronicle (Feb. 24, 2016) <br class="br"> "Chinese website publishes, then pulls, explosive letter calling for President Xi’s resignation" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/03/16/government-linked-website-published-then-pulled-call-for-president-xis-resignation/, Washington Post (March 16, 2016) <br class="br">2010s
Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister
Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool (3 October 1946), quoted in The Times (4 October 1946), p. 2.
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Speech at 1994 Gala for 83rd Birthday http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/rr40/speeches/gala_speech.htm (3 February 1994) <br class="br">Post-presidency (1989&ndash;2004)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech at Mansion House (7 August 1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 287
Jeff Bezos (1964) American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future - CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-jeff-bezos-looks-to-the-future/.
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Foundations of Leninism