Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes

Man seems to insist on ignoring the lessons available from history.

Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

A political ideology is a very handy thing to have. It’s a real time saver because it tells you what you think about things you know nothing about.

It is with much reluctance that I am obliged to look upon him as a man whose mind is warped by prejudice and so blinded by ignorance as to be unfit for the office he holds. However wise and scientific as philosopher, as a politician he is a child and a dupe of party.

These antipatriotic prejudices are the abortions of folly impregnated by faction.

Nothing is more fallacious than to expect to produce any valuable or permanent results in political projects by relying merely on the reason of men. Men are ... for the most part governed by the impulses of passion.

Nothing hath an uglier Look to us than Reason, when it is not of our side.

Partisanship shapes the reality that people choose to see.

No man can see his own prejudices.

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

Politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings but to human nature, of which reason is but a part and by no means the greatest part.

Hatred obscures all distinctions.

History is neither written nor made without love or hate.

I don't think you want political parties that are entirely driven by some extremely doctrinal ideology.

Great and glorious events which dazzle the beholder are represented by politicians as the outcome of grand designs whereas they are usually products of temperaments and passions.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.

It was the Democrats who were against civil rights legislation

Once you have a point of view all history will back you up.

In all general questions which become the subjects of discussion, there are always some truths mixed with falsehoods. I confess, there is danger where men are capable of holding two offices. Take mankind in general, they are vicious, their passions may be operated upon. We have been taught to reprobate the danger of influence in the British government, without duly reflecting how far it was necessary to support a good government. We have taken up many ideas upon trust, and at last, pleased with our own opinions, establish them as undoubted truths.

Those great and glorious actions that dazzle our eyes with their luster are represented by statesmen as the result of great wisdomand excellent design; whereas, in truth, they are commonly the effects of the humors and passions.

Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.

Nothing genuinely historical was ever lost in this country. For this reason we have two ruling parties: villains and fools.

How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?

There is nothing stronger than human prejudice.