Ideological Polarization Quotes

If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.

The struggle between Fascism and Democracy can permit no compromises.... Either we or they.

The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.

Federal governments and even state governments within countries have basically been immobilized by conflicting interests, by conflicting views of what science is, and the inability to lead. They are immobilized because they don’t want to take tough votes and alienate half of the constituency.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Donald Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the death of real political conservatism: a cool, intelligent reluctance to believe that all change is good, a love for the established, the particular, and the well-worn.

American public opinion is like an ocean, it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.

Politics consists wholly of a succession of unintelligent crazes, many of them so idiotic that they exist only as battle-cries and shibboleths and are not reducible to logical statement at all.

There are some Republicans in Congress who have leaned so far to the right, that they could fall out of the Capitol.

There are few things more amusing in the world of politics than watching moderate Republicans charging to the right in pursuit of greater glory.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.

There has been a sea change in the way Democrats view and talk about the Supreme Court. Democrats used to respectfully disagree with the justices. Now they call them illegitimate and corrupt, partisan and extreme.

I don't really get into that whole red-blue-conservative-liberal because I can't tell them apart. They all seem inept. So, for me, it's not something I focus on at all. I probably should be more political than I am. I just don't care.

Partisanship is a fire not to be quenched. It demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its busting into a flame, lest instead of warming, it should consume.

I know something. America is not broken, Washington, D.C. is broken.

Nobody likes, you know, the ugly parts of politics.

Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.

Republican pundits always believe Republicans are going to win; Democratic pundits always believe Democrats are going to win.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the middle.

Americans have been hurting, but when we demanded solutions, too often Washington responded with the same stale mindset that led to failed policies like Obamacare. It's a mindset that gave us political talking points, not serious solutions.

Our party may have swung too far right at various times.

In Washington, you have imaginary problems, and they can't even solve the imaginary problems.

We already have a sabbatical system. It's called opposition, and I've had enough of it.

Politics has long been a place where fear and loathing are exploited: fear of progress, fear of the unknown, fear of the other, fear of our own neighbors.