Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

People don't vote parties. They vote individuals.

I’m against parties. Take the party designations from the ballot and make politicians run on their names only.

Well, I've been a Republican for all of my voting life.

Never you mind about the country, or about the state, or the city, or about the ward. You take care of your precinct.

Historically, cohesive political parties have been the glue that enables democratic political systems like ours to make the decisions needed to govern.

The political parties, or more accurately, the inner clique that controls them, select the candidates for whom the people vote. The candidates express the will of the party and not that of the people. The platforms of the contending parties are adjusted to trick the voters into balloting for their candidates.

In our form of democracy the expression of the popular will can be effected only through the instrumentality of political parties.

This election isn't about race; it's about the direction of the [Democratic] party. They say, "You're not supporting the party nominee." I endorsed Daley twice over Republican opponents. He didn't endorse me once. This is about reciprocal voting and mutual support.

Permanent political parties have been born in this country after, and not before, national campaigns, and they have come from the people, not from the proclamations of individual leaders.

I don’t attend rallies and I don’t participate in presidential elections. In fact, I don’t participate in any election. I don’t participate in the governor’s race, I don’t participate in the mayor’s race. I participate in one election every two years. Then I’m strong for Hebert. That is the only election I take part in.

Vote for the best guy. Forget about the party and the planks.

Each county elector makes his own rules

A man of sound political instincts can no more subscribe to the doctrine of absolute independence of party on the one hand than to that of unquestioning party allegiance on the other…. If we had no party allegiance, our politics would become mere windy anarchy, and, under present conditions, our government could hardly continue at all. If we had no independence, we should always be running the risk of the most degraded kind of despotism,—the despotism of the party boss and the party machine.

Our American elections have been fought between parties which, roughly, have represented the forces advocating change and those preferring stability.

When it comes to a mayor, they [the voters] often want whatever they haven’t just had.

Parties perform, to some degree, at least three functions in a democratic government. They recruit candidates, mobilize voters, and assemble power within the formal government.

Voting Liberal is a non-thing. Historically, it might be a good idea to have a Conservative government, because change is a good thing. But I don't know that I could bring myself to vote Tory.

I don't always vote in general elections, but I think I've always voted Labour.

By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties.

The true privilege of being Mayor is that I have the opportunity to be everyone's neighbor.

Political parties don't work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.

When politics is interesting, people go vote.

I don't vote party lines. Never have. I vote for the best candidate.

I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote.

Why would I be willing to challenge my Republican leadership? Because my allegiance will always be to the Constitution and the American people first and foremost, not to my political party.