Factionalism Quotes

Let me now 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. It 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. In governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged.

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

No one has murdered more communists than the Communist Soviet Union under Stalin

Islam does not command us to fight against other religions but against oppression and poverty.

Our citizens never hesitate to take sides against one another, whether it's Democrats versus Republicans, Coke drinkers opposed to Pepsi enthusiasts or Yankee loyalists against Red Sox aficionados.

A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

The division of Whig and Tory... is the most salutary of all divisions and ought, therefore, to be fostered instead of being amalgamated; for take away this, and some more dangerous principle of division will take its place.

Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.

After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it - but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order.

Nothing will divide the church so much as the love of power.

Today's Republican party is too beholden to factions generally.

… a people which desires freedom but knows no order … a people which on one day elects its rulers, on the next begins to mistrust them and on the third condemns them; a people devoid of any spirit of fraternity or concession; a people among whom may be discovered a hundred different factions and engaged in abusing without the spirit of moderation …

If we mean to support the liberty and independence which has cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must drive far away the demon of party spirit and local reproach.

The pursuit of happiness … calls for the institution of government to regulate and adjust the collisions and passions of society incident to the existence of a civil society.

Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.

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

Party spirit was ... and always will be, wherever indulged, the bane of society and good neighborhood.

Faction is the greatest evil and the most common danger. "Faction" is the conventional English translation of the Greek stasis, one of the most remarkable words to be found in any language.

Washington DC has become an evidence-free zone.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed.

Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

Corbyn is about 1970s Bennite control.

A Zeal for our Country is glorious, but a Spirit of Faction infamous

It is important not to confuse the national spirit with that of the faction which presently dominates…

So it went until the spring of 1927, when Charles Ruthenberg died and the struggle for factional parity at his casket – conducted, it must be said, somewhat more fairly than the struggle for parity at the fourth convention – climaxed the ceremonies to honor the first leader of American Communism.