Joe Lieberman Quotes

The public good is being compromised in the conflicts between our rival political parties.

There are some in Congress who would rather see their opponents lose than see their country win. That has got to stop…. They must find a way to put country ahead of party.

We are losing sight of civility in government and politics. Debate and dialogue is taking a back seat to the politics of destruction and anger and control. Dogma has replaced thoughtful discussion between people of differing views.

I'm very concerned about the tone of politics in recent years. We've seen a decline in civility and bipartisanship, and a rapid increase in hostility between those who have differing opinions. I think this has led to the alienation of the public in governance, which jeopardizes democratic participation.

There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great political parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other.

There used to be a civility. Today, members of Congress would rather destroy another member than compromise.

We have seen in Washington the worst kind of partisanship, the worst kind of gridlock. There is nothing wrong with our country. There is much wrong with our politics ….

Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters. But I don't think so.

There is very little chance of the modern Republican Party putting the national interest above their own partisan interests.

A government full of Democrats would rather have you be a Republican, and a government full of Republicans would rather have you be a Democrat, than have you oppose both.

Texans don't want to sit back and watch Austin turn into Washington, D.C. State leaders in power keep forcing people to opposite corners to prepare for a fight instead of coming together to get things done.

There's very little reason in politics these days.

While Obama, the olive-branch poseur, has called for a restoration of 'civility' in Washington and liberal elites whine and whinny about the need for 'no labels,' class-warfare demagoguery has metastasized unchecked.

Politics is a highly tribal business.

I've never seen Washington as divided as we are right now.

In this closely divided nation, it satisfies no practical purpose for the entertainment elite to be identified as so intensely political and utterly one-sided.

There cannot be a greater Judgment befall a Country than such a dreadful Spirit of Division as rends a Government into two distinct People, and makes them greater Strangers and more adverse to one another, than if they were actually two different Nations.

Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are things inseparable from free government.

There can be but two great political parties in this country.

I long for the time when the public service will get onto a higher plane than that of serving political parties, and come to serve the public interest instead.

We are fond of distinctions; we place ourselves in opposition, and quarrel under the denominations of faction and party, without any material subject of controversy.

The tone is toxic here in Washington and we are exporting it around the country.

Party spirit is in England an incurable disease.

We need less bipartisanship in Congress.

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.