George Washington Quotes

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

This spirit [of Party], unfortunately, is inseperable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controuled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

[The spirit of party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another.

Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man.

Our two-party system is a fraud, a sham, a delusion. On foreign policy, trade, immigration, Big Government, we have one-party government, one party press; and conservatives are being played for suckers.

[The spirit of party] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

Faction is to party what the superlative is to the positive. Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of all parties.

The presidency has even become a partisan thing. The presidency has been totally politicized and totally made partisan, as evidenced by the IRS going after the Tea Party and any number of other examples I give you.

There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn't have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

Too many politicians are shifting the critical themes of our national conversations from a 'big ideas' American Brand Platform to narrowly focused, polarizing sound bites that put party philosophy before what used to be heralded as the common good. These ideas, more often than not, divide us rather than serve to bind us.

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.

I'm always happy to see one of my Republican colleagues make a mistake.

The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.

The mission of parties is to keep the people divided into factions, that they may be unable to do anything for themselves.

A factious spirit prevails from one end of our country to the other. And by that spirit both Senators and Representatives are chosen. By that spirit the government acts; and, as to the provisions of the Constitution, however they may fill up the space of a speech to round off a period, or perfume a flower of rhetoric, they cannot restrain men heated in the chase of party game.

Vilifying members of other political parties is a puerile exercise.

We need less bipartisanship in Congress.

Within 90 days from the time Lincoln that is inaugurated, the Republican Party will be utterly ruined and destroyed. His path is environed with so many difficulties, that even if he had the ability of Jefferson and the energy of Jackson, he would fail, but he is a weak and inexperienced man, and his administration will be doomed from the commencement. If he takes that radical section of the Republican Party, the conservative wing of it will cut loose and repudiate him. If, on the other hand, he courts the conservatives and pursues a moderate conciliatory policy, the radicals will make open war upon his administration.

Because of our peculiar electoral law, the American government is divided between two parties. The American people are not.

I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.

No political party has exclusive patent rights on prosperity.

I've never known a time when the in-fighting in the Labour Party was so bitter.