John Adams Quotes

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

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

A town meeting is a legislature of citizens, for citizens, and by citizens. The fact that each citizen of the town is also a legislator separates the New England town meeting from all other forms of democracy.

A caucus is basically an undemocratic method of selecting a candidate.

Party membership is a thing for which no citizen is obligated to give an accounting.

The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic.

If the question at Chicago had been who shall be the next President? instead of who shall be the candidate? beyond all question the choice would have fallen on New York's illustrious statesman .

Even under absolute princes, the subordinate government of cities is commonly republican while that of counties and provinces is monarchical.

The political parties have no role except to stage the conventions, where you celebrate a decision that's already been made elsewhere.

I cannot answer your question because I am neither a Democrat or a Republican. I am a constitutional monarchy.

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

The [founding] fathers hoped not to create a system of party government under a constitution, but rather a constitutional government that would check and control parties.

I have always felt that for local offices in a small place, where everybody knows everyone else, the vote should be more a question of the man than one of party allegiance.

Party organization, party discipline, party proscription, and their offspring, the spoils system, have been unknown to the state [of South Carolina]. Nothing of the kind is necessary to produce concentration.

I am not interested in state politics.

Caucuses are different than primaries, and winner-take-all primaries are how Mitt Romney eventually took over Newt Gingrich in 2012 and why Rick Santorum left.

Here in Brazil, the president and the vice president are elected together.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

Consider this: The United States held its first presidential election in 1789. It marked the first peaceful transfer of executive power between parties in the fourth presidential election in 1801, and it took another 200 years' worth of presidential elections before the courts had to settle an election.

The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.

We live in a representative democracy, characterized by free and fair elections and peaceful transfers of power. After most elections, roughly half of Americans are thrilled with the results; the other half are profoundly disappointed.

In America, we have a two-party system, and the American Constitution is a piece of brilliance, but they did not know when they set it up we would just have a two-party system. It just so happens that our electorate pushed towards the two-party system because it's a very good way to govern.

When there is a parliamentarian crisis, the only solution in a democracy is early elections.

People lose sight that the counties run the elections.

A great many of us have been concerned about the presidential nomination system... whether or not we have drifted into a system that simply doesn't work so well any more.