Quotes about party
page 7

Grover Cleveland photo

“Party honesty is party expediency.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Interview in New York Commercial Advertiser (19 September 1889).

Andrei Grechko photo
Eric Foner photo
Jim Hightower photo
Julia Gillard photo

“I know the Leader of the Opposition [Tony Abbott] has an unhealthy kind of obsession with the so-called "faceless men in the Labor Party"; what he really should be obsessed about is the useless men sitting behind him.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

In Question Time, c. March 2012
"Labor cleans up after aftermath" http://www.abc.net.au/insiders/content/2012/s3445116.htm, in Insiders (ABC), 4 March 2012

James Russell Lowell photo

“Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man;
He’s ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,—
He’s ben true to one party, an’ thet is himself.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 2
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

Vitruvius photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo
Maria Mitchell photo

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

Stephen Harper photo
Bill Bryson photo
Theodore Parker photo

“In America, the Democratic Party thinks slavery is 'indispensable to good government', and is 'the normal condition of one seventh part of the people.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

"The relation of slavery to a Republican form of government" https://archive.org/details/ASPC0005189300 (26 May 1858), New England Anti-Slavery Convention.
The relation of slavery to a Republican form of government (1858)

Bob Barr photo

“The definition of throwing your vote away is to go into that voting booth and vote for one of two parties that will not change the direction this country's going in.”

Bob Barr (1948) Republican and Libertarian politician

Concord Monitor, (22 July 2008) Libertarian appeals to decisive voters http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080723/FRONTPAGE/807230305, Concord Monitor, 22 July 2008.
2000s, 2008

Bret Easton Ellis photo
Walt Whitman photo

“In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball … Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms … the game of ball is glorious.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Comments on baseball in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (23 July 1846), as quoted in Walt Whitman Looks at the Schools (1950) by Florence Bernstein Freedman, p. 126-127 http://books.google.com/books?id=M34nK8SaiMcC&dq=Walt+Whitman+schools&lr=&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

Matt Sanchez photo
Richard Cobden photo
Alex Salmond photo
Paul Keating photo
John Major photo

“I have been a Member of Parliament for 18 years. I have been a member of the Government for 14 years, of the Cabinet for ten years and Prime Minister since 1990. When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do. I shall, therefore, advise my parliamentary colleagues that it would be appropriate for them to consider the selection of a new leader of the Conservative Party to lead the party through Opposition through the years that lie immediately ahead.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Major's Speech", The Times, 3 May 1997, p. 2.
Statement in Downing Street on 2 May 1997 following the general election in which the Conservative Party was heavily defeated. Major was just about to resign as Prime Minister and announced his decision to stand down as party leader simultaneously.
1990s, 1997

Sarah Palin photo

“We must win, because Ohio, the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, not mainstream Democrat ideology, the values, the planks in the platform of the Democrat Party. It's the far-left wing of the party is getting ready to take over the entire federal government.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Campaign speech in Lakewood, Ohio, November 3, 2008 http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/03/palin-%E2%80%98far-left-wing-of-the-democrat-party%E2%80%99-getting-ready-for-takeover/
2008

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo

“The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

The British Constitution (1844), 322, 323; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 2-8.

Anthony Weiner photo
Ludovico Ariosto photo

“Partial and unwise
Your judgment seems, as well all judgments may,
Wherein the losing party has not room
To plead before the judge pronounces doom.”

A me non par che ben deciso,
Né che ben giusto alcun giudicio cada,
Ove prima non s'oda quanto nieghi
La parte o affermi, e sue ragioni alleghi.
Canto XXXII, stanza 101 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Stephen Harper photo

“In the last Parliament, [the Liberal Party] enacted comprehensive gun control…”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

Lysander Spooner photo

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Alan Sillitoe photo

“Makes Room at the Top look like a vicarage tea-party.”

Alan Sillitoe (1928–2010) British writer

The Daily Telegraph, reviewing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; cited from The Bookseller, October 25, 1958, p. 1641.
Also used as a tagline for the 1960 film adaptation.
Criticism

Charles Dickens photo
Francis Bacon photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“The real issue here, if you look at the Koch Brothers' agenda, is: look at what many of the extreme right-wing people believe. Obamacare is just the tip of the iceberg. These people want to abolish the concept of the minimum wage, they want to privatize the Veteran's Administration, they want to privatize Social Security, end Medicare as we know it, massive cuts in Medicaid, wipe out the EPA, you don’t have an Environmental Protection Agency anymore, Department of Energy gone, Department of Education gone. That is the agenda. And many people don’t understand that the Koch Brothers have poured hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the tea party and two other kinds of ancillary organizations to push this agenda.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Regarding the United States federal government shutdown of 2013, [Sanders, Bernie, MSNBC News Interview (7 October 2013) (06:41), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LC_4h8rk9E, 7 October 2013, YouTube, 12 October 2013]
[Staff, Bernie Sanders Says Koch Brothers Shut Down Government Via Citizens United, http://www.inquisitr.com/984880/bernie-sanders-says-koch-brothers-shut-down-government-via-citizens-united, 8 October 2013, The Inquisitr, 12 October 2013]
2010s

Benjamin J. Davis Jr. photo
Brian Keith photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Robert Graves photo
Leonid Brezhnev photo
Julie Andrews photo
James A. Garfield photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Irving Kristol photo
Richard Holbrooke photo

“Months later, Roger Cohen would write in The New York Time that preventing an attack on Banja Luka was "an acto of consummate Realpolitik" on our part, since letting the Federation [of Bosnia-Herzegovina] take the city would have "derailed" the peace process. Cohen, one of the most knowledgeable journalists to cover the was, misunderstood our motives in opposing an attack on Banja Luka. A true practitioner of Realpolitik would have encouraged the attack regardless of its human consequences. In fact, humanitarian concerns decided the case for me. Given the harsh behavior of Federation troops during the offensive, it seemed certain that the fall of Banja Luka would lead to forced evictions and random murders. I did not think the United States should contribute to the creation of new refugees and more human suffering in order to take a city that would have to be returned later. Revenge might be a central part of the ethos of the Balkans, but American policy could not be party of it. Our responsibility was to implement the American national interest, as best as we could determine it. But I am no longer certain we were right to oppose an attack on Banja Luka. Had we known then that the Bosnian Serbs would have been able to defy or ignore so many of the key political provisions of the peace agreement in 1996 and 1997, the negotiating team might not have opposed such an attack. However, even with American encouragement, it is by no means certain that an attack would have taken palce - or, if it had, that it would have been successful. Tuđman would have had to carry the burden of the attack, and the Serb lines were already stiffening. The Croatian Army had just taken heavy casualties on the Sarva. Furthermore, if it fell, Banja Luka would either have gone to the Muslims or been returned later to the Serbs, thus making it of dubious value to Tuđman. There was another intriguing factor in the equation - one of the few things that Milošević and Izetbegović had agreed on. Banja Luka, they both said, was the center of moderate, anti-Pale sentiment within the Bosnian Serb community, and should be built up in importance as a center of opposition to Pale. Izetbegovic himself was ambivalent about taking the city, and feared that if it fell, it would only add to Croat-Bosnian tensions.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 166-167

Chris Pontius photo

“Some people just don't know how to party.”

Chris Pontius (1974) American actor

Jackass: The Movie

Arthur Scargill photo

“I did not join this Party to have a yuppy-land approach, to run capitalism better than the Tories. I joined this party to change this society and create a socialist alternative.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

Speech to the Labour Party Conference (3 October 1988), quoted in "Scargill in furious attack on reform", The Times (4 October 1988), p. 9

Dennis M. Ritchie photo

“I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.”

Dennis M. Ritchie (1941–2011) American computer scientist

USENET : net.unix-wizards, 1984-03-13 (retrieved from the archive in Google Groups) http://groups.google.com/group/net.unix-wizards/msg/1c9d2e4c341f9b41,

Rajiv Gandhi photo
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo photo

“I have spared no effort to establish upon a solid and enduring basis those sentiments of union and concord which are so indispensible for the progress and advancement of all those who dwell in my native land, and, so long as I live, I propose to use all the means at my command to see to it that both races cast a stigma upon the disagreeable events that took place on the Sonoma frontier in 1846. If before I pass on to render an account of my acts to the Supreme Creator, I succeed in being a witness to a reconciliation between victor and vanquished, conquerors and conquered, I shall die with the conviction of not having striven in vain. In bringing this chapter to a close, I will remark that, if the men who hoisted the “Bear Flag” had raised the flag that Washington sanctified by his abnegation and patriotism, there would have been no war on the Sonoma frontier, for all our minds were prepared to give a brotherly embrace to the sons of the Great Republic, whose enterprising spirit had filled us with admiration. Ill-advisedly, however, as some say, or dominated by a desire to rule without let or hindrance, as others say, they placed themselves under the shelter of a flag that pictured a bear, an animal that we took as the emblem of rapine and force. This mistake was the cause of all the trouble, for when the Californians saw parties of men running over their plains and forests under the “Bear Flag,” they thought that they were dealing with robbers and took the steps they thought most effective for the protection of their lives and property.”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted by George Mason University's History Matters: “More Like A Pig Than a Bear”: Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Is Taken Prisoner During the Bear Flag Revolt, 1846
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“In the army it takes an eight-man working party to help a brass hat blow his nose.”

Source: The Puppet Masters (1951), Chapter 30 (p. 153)

“The existence of a state within the State—the Party and the bureaucracy—is a phenomenon of the post-War world.”

Günter Reimann (1904–2005) German economist

Source: The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, 2014, p. 18

T. H. White photo
Michael Bloomberg photo

“I believe we can turn around our country’s current, wrong-headed course, if we start basing our actions on ideas, shared values, and a commitment to solve problems without regard for party.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/public_health/mayor_bloomberg_delivers_opening_address_at_ceasefire_bridging_the_political_divide_conference
Partisanship

Arnold Schwarzenegger photo

“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President. Like many Americans, I’ve been conflicted by this election – I still haven’t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month. But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else – American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party – it is your duty.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

written Twitter statement reported 8 October 2016 article by Variety https://variety.com/2016/biz/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-i-will-not-vote-for-the-republican-candidate-for-president-1201882915/, released a day after the release of the Access Hollywood tape from 2005 of an interview of Trump by Billy Bush
2010s

Chuck Berry photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Frank Harris photo
Wesley Clark photo
Daniel Dennett photo

“Remember Marxism? It used to be a sour sort of fun to tease Marxists about the contradictions in some of their pet ideas. The revolution of the proletariat was inevitable, good Marxists believed, but if so, why were they so eager to enlist us in their cause? If it was going to happen anyway, it was going to happen with or without our help. But of course the inevitability that Marxists believe in is one that depends on the growth of the movement and all its political action. There were Marxists working very hard to bring about the revolution, and it was comforting to them to believe that their success was guaranteed in the long run. And some of them, the only ones that were really dangerous, believed so firmly in the rightness of their cause that they believed it was permissible to lie and deceive in order to further it. They even taught this to their children, from infancy. These are the "red-diaper babies," children of hardline members of the Communist Party of America, and some of them can still be found infecting the atmosphere of political action in left-wing circles, to the extreme frustration and annoyance of honest socialists and others on the left.Today we have a similar phenomenon brewing on the religious right: the inevitability of the End Days, or the Rapture, the coming Armageddon that will separate the blessed from the damned in the final day of Judgment. Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with the Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion. And these people are not funny at all. They are dangerous, for the same reason that red-diaper babies are dangerous: they put their allegiance to their creed ahead of their commitment to democracy, to peace, to (earthly) justice — and to truth. If push comes to shove, some of the are prepared to lie and even to kill…”

Breaking the Spell (2006)

Pablo Neruda photo

“There in Rangoon I realized that the gods
were enemies, just like God,
of the poor human being.
Gods
in alabaster extended
like white whales,
gods gilded like spikes,
serpent gods entwining
the crime of being born,
naked and elegant buddhas
smiling at the cocktail party
of empty eternity
like Christ on his horrible cross,
all of them capable of anything,
of imposing on us their heaven,
all with torture or pistol
to purchase piety or burn our blood,
fierce gods made by men
to conceal their cowardice,
and there it was all like that,
the whole earth reeking of heaven,
and heavenly merchandise.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Allí en Rangoon comprendí que los dioses
eran tan enemigos como Dios
del pobre ser humano.
Dioses
de alabastro tendidos
como ballenas blancas,
dioses dorados como las espigas,
dioses serpientes enroscados
al crimen de nacer,
budhas desnudos y elegantes
sonriendo en el coktail
de la vacía eternidad
como Cristo en su cruz horrible,
todos dispuestos a todo,
a imponernos su cielo,
todos con llagas o pistola
para comprar piedad o quemarnos la sangre,
dioses feroces del hombre
para esconder la cobardía,
y allí todo era así,
toda la tierra olía a cielo,
a mercadería celeste.
Religión en el Este (Religion in the East) from Memorial of Isla Negra [Memorial de Isla Negra] (1964), trans. by Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 463).

Gore Vidal photo
Martin Amis photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Albrecht Thaer photo

“Arriving in Berlin, I found myself in my element, and began to breathe freely. Jerusalem and Lessing had given us letters of introduction to the greatest men in Berlin; but they knew us already, Leisewitz as author of "Julius Von Tarent," and myself as author of my Dissertation. We had daily the choice of the first society; covers were laid for us in the first families daily, for dinner as well as supper. Von Zetlitz sent a general invitation that covers were laid for us every day during our stay in Berlin. Most of the time we could spare was divided between physicians and philosophers, of which the latter had the greater share. Spalding, Mendelsohn, Eberhard, Engel, Nicolai, Reichard, and Madame Bamberger, daughter of Doctor Sack, Bishop of Berlin, honoured us with their most sincere friendship. The latter, a highly gifted and accomplished lady, possessed the rare art of spreading over the most abstract hypothesis and theorem the brightest and most charming light; Jerusalem, the father of the ill-fated Werther (see the "Sorrows of Werther," by Goethe), used to send her his works to correct, and she alone was able to console and comfort him, when he was informed of the death of his beloved son. This amiable lady assumes in common life the character of a plain woman, and when at court, as friend of the Queen and the Princess Amalie, she won all hearts by her truly noble man ners and unconstrained courtesy: at court beloved, she was admired, nay, adored in the philosophical clubs. But do not think that here alone we spent all our time; Madame Bamberger knew how to blend study with amusement; she issued frequently cards of invitation to select parties, for suppers and balls, and her house was the point of union of all that was learned, beautiful, and amiable. Thus Berlin became my Paradise. I had the most tempting offers from the Minister of State to stay here; but the illness of my father obliged me, after a stay of three months, to return home. I visited Lessing on my journey back; stayed two days, which were the most interesting of all days I ever remember.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Tony Blair photo

“I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Michael White, "Blair wants 'to make UK young again'", Guardian, 4 October 1995.
Speech to the Labour Party conference, 3 October 1995.
1990s

Calvin Coolidge photo

“A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Letter to Charles F. Gardner (1924)

Ilana Mercer photo

“The sounds emanating from the uterine core of the Democratic Party are the subhuman grunts and growls one hears from animals in estrus or mid-feed. Something is terribly wrong with them.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Party of Man-Haters," https://townhall.com/columnists/ilanamercer/2018/10/19/the-party-of-manhaters-n2530054 Townhall.com, October 19, 2018
2010s, 2018

“The two-party system is breaking down into a race system.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

Frederick Douglass photo

“The Republican Party is the ship and all else is the sea around us.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

As quoted in Frederick Douglass American Hero http://books.google.com/books?id=9ykO8sKDE30C&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=%22I+know+the+man.+I+like+a+man+in+the+Presidential+chair%22&source=bl&ots=0JRNsxNa8j&sig=UJpkupLqhe7-DOrhKxCYSCo7EcY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FA9lU5z5JsnQsQTM1YH4CA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20know%20the%20man.%20I%20like%20a%20man%20in%20the%20Presidential%20chair%22&f=false (2008), by Connie A. Miller, Sr., p. 277
Variant: For colored men the Republican party is the deck, all outside is the sea.

Theresa May photo

“The country has spoken, and the United Kingdom will leave the EU. The job now is about uniting the Party, uniting the country – securing the Union – and negotiating the best possible deal for Britain.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

Dennis Skinner photo
Eugene V. Debs photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“I attended the Royal Opening of the Indian Conference yesterday…Our delegation is starting well, but Winston [Churchill] is in the depths of gloom. He wants the Conference to bust up quickly and the Tory Party to go back to pre-war and govern with a strong hand. He has become once more the subaltern of Hussars of '96.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (13 November 1930), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 355.
1930

Ted Nugent photo

“With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one’s logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

On why entertainment celebrities tend to favor the Democratic Party, as quoted in "Ted Nugent blasts Matt Damon on Palin" in The Christian Science Monitor (18 September 2008) http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/09/16/ted-nugent-blasts-matt-damon-on-palin/

Ai Weiwei photo
Tony Blair photo

“I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Philip Webster, "Blair sets sights on Downing Street", The Times, 22 July 1994.
Speech on being elected Leader of the Labour Party, 21 July 1994.
1990s

Julia Gillard photo

“It's a big emotional thing to do, to challenge the leadership of your political party. There is nothing pleasant about it, there's nothing fun about it. It's quite a horrible gut-wrenching process.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

The Killing Season, Episode one: The Prime Minister and his Loyal Deputy (2006–09)

“The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties.”

Carol Grace (1924–2003) American actress

As quoted in Funny Ladies : The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women (2001) by Bill Adler, p. 80

“The party that negotiates in haste is often at a disadvantage.”

Howard Raiffa (1924–2016) American academic

Part I, Chapter 1, Some organizing Questions, p. 16.
The Art and Science of Negotiation (1982)

Jeremy Hardy photo
Hermann Rauschning photo
Leszek Kolakowski photo

“Lenin’ s article of 1905, "Party Organization and Party Literature", was used for decades, and is still used, to justify ideologically the enslavement of the written word in Russia. It has been argued that it refers only to political literature, but this is not so: it relates to every kind of writing. It contains the words: "Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, ‘ a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically conscious vanguard of the entire working class" (Works, vol. 10, p. 45). For the benefit of "hysterical intellectuals" who deplore this seemingly bureaucratic attitude, Lenin explains that there can be no mechanical levelling in the field of literature; there must be room for personal initiative, imagination, etc.; none the less, literary work must be part of the party’ s work and controlled by the party. This, of course, was written during the fight for "hourgeois democracy", on the assumption that Russia would in due course enjoy freedom of speech but that literary members of the party would have to display party-mindedness in their writings; as in other cases, the obligation would become general when the party controlled the apparatus of state coercion.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 515
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume II, The Golden Age

Mao Zedong photo
John Bright photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“The Party which dares to attack the foundations of our State, which sets itself against religion and does not stop at attacking the person of the All-Highest Ruler must be rooted out to the very last stump.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech (26 February 1897), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 159
1890s

Tony Benn photo
Ranil Wickremesinghe photo
Wendell Berry photo

“Individualism is going around these days in uniform, handing out the party line on individualism.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Think Little".
A Continuous Harmony (1972)

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma photo
Jeremy Rifkin photo
Elton Mayo photo
Keith Ellison photo

“I believe a message of solidarity, and economic opportunity, and prosperity is going to win out, and that`s what the Democratic Party stands for, and that is where we`re going to have our focus.”

Keith Ellison (1963) American politician and lawyer

Interview with Chris Hayes, November 14, 2016. http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/all-in/2016-11-14

Amir Taheri photo

“The Shah's vision of the ideal form of government was not so far removed from that of Mossadeq. In that ideal model one man, the king, prime minister or Pishva [Führer] would act as the guardian of the nation's highest interests. The Pishva, because he loves his people, could never do anything that might not be good for the people and the country. He might sacrifice the interests of the few for the benefit of the many. But he would never harm 'the people' or 'the nation' as a whole. Mossadeq's version of the same model envisaged a role for crowds, political groups - though not for political parties - and religious associations whose task was to support the Pishva by fighting his opponents and making him feel loved and cherished. In the Shah's model, the Pishva's decisions were to be carried out exclusively through the bureaucracy with the armed forces always ready to crush any opposition. All that was left for 'the nation' to do was applaud the Pishva and make him feel good. Mossadeq and the Shah advanced exactly the same argument in defence of their respective models: Iran, being constantly prey to the devilish appetite of the rapacious foreign powers, the influence of the ajnabi (foreigners), multiplying the centres of political power would allow the ajnabi to infiltrate the nation's structures. Neither man could invisage a situation in which different sections of the Iranian society might, for reasons of their own, oppose the Leader. They could conceive of no circumstances in which an opposition movement could emerge without foreign backing and intrigue.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Max Eastman photo
Oliver P. Morton photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“Our aim is not just to remove our uniquely incompetent Government from office—it is to destroy the socialist fallacies—indeed the whole fallacy of socialism—that the Labour Party exists to spread.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Junior Carlton Club Political Council (4 May 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103017
Leader of the Opposition

William Trufant Foster photo