Partisanship Quotes

“I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“I don't have a 'side'—I'm responsible for what I say and nothing else.”
― Glenn Greenwald

“There is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into ‘coteries’ where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumor that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other groups can say.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

“The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'—the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“A lot of lip service gets paid to being honest, but no one really wants to hear it unless what's being said is the party line.”
― Colin Quinn

“Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?”
― Walter Kirn

“Active loyalists do not merely support the president but publicly defend even his most controversial moves. Passive loyalists retreat from public view when scandals erupt but still vote with the president. Critical loyalists try, in a sense, to have it both ways. They may publicly distance themselves from the president's worst behavior, but they do not take any action (for example, voting in Congress) that will weaken, much less bring down, the president. In the face of presidential abuse, any of these responses will enable authoritarianism.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

“Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following.”
― Paul Johnson, Modern Times

“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.”
― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address

“And I see the danger in either case will arise principally from the conduct and views of two very unprincipled parties in the United States-two fires, between which the honest and substantial people have long found themselves situated.”
― Richard Henry Lee, The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers

“I’m afraid most people choose political parties based on the same question they ask about regular parties: Who else is going to be there?”
― Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

“More generally, I fear that we are becoming disconnected from the ideals that have long inspired and united us. When we laugh, it is more often at each other than with each other. The list of topics that can’t be discussed without blowing up a family or college reunion is lengthening. We don’t just disagree; we are astonished at the views that others hold to be self-evident. We seem to be living in the same country but different galaxies—and most of us lack the patience to explore the space between. This weakens us and does, indeed, make us susceptible.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“The only news he wanted to hear was that
people had become a little sensible and decent and peace-
ful; he disliked this Cup-Tie attitude, in which people
took sides for the sake of excitement, and rooted for
their team to win without any sense of responsibility.
This passion for vicarious belligerence! Obviously
neither of them really believed that anything unpleasant
would happen to them, and the bogey of being stoned by
strikers was only evoked for the sake of a little uncostly
excitement.”
― Richard Aldington, All Men Are Enemies

“Yale political scientist Alexander Coppock conducted a series of experiments designed to measure incremental changes in political opinion when people are presented with new information about a topic. ... [H]e was able to draw four consistent conclusions about the way that our brains react to new political information:

1. Effects are nearly uniformly positive: individuals are persuaded in the direction of evidence.
2. Effects are small: changes in opinion are incremental.
3. Effects are relatively homogenous: regardless of background, individuals respond to information by similar degrees.
4. Effects are durable: at a minimum, effects endure for weeks, albeit somewhat diminished. ...

This means that people do not change their opinions dramatically in a short amount of time. But it also means that partisans don't reject good arguments and good evidence when they encounter it just because it does not conform to their worldview.”
― Michael Austin, We Must Not Be Enemies: Restoring America's Civic Tradition

“I have no idea who shall win the upcoming election but the one thing I can assure you of is that whomever loses will claim the other side cheated no matter the facts. Keep that in mind before supporting their present and future claims.”
― C.A.A. Savastano

“This doesn't mean we can or should return to an analog past: there was a lot that was wrong with the old media world, and there is much that is right about the new: political movements, online forums, and new ideas that wouldn't exist without it. But all these changes--from the fragmentation of the public sphere to the absence of a center ground, from the rise of partisanship to the waning influence of respected neutral institutions--do seem to bother people who have difficulty with complexity and cacophony. Even if we weren't living through a period of rapid demographic change, even if the economy were not in turmoil, even if there were no health crisis, it is still the case that the splintering of the center right and the center left, the rise in some countries of separatist movements, the growth in angry rhetoric, the proliferation of extremist and racist voices that had been marginalized for half a century would persuade a chunk of voters to vote for someone who promises a new and more orderly order.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“Not every election will be so filled with venom, misinformation, resentments, and outside interference as this one was. Solutions are going to matter again in politics.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened

“When people feel a sense of belonging to a given social group, they absorb the doctrinal positions that the group advocates. However party and religious identification come about, once they take root in early adulthood, they often persist. Partisan identities are enduring features of citizens' self-conceptions. They do not merely come and go with election cycles and campaign ephemera. the public's interest in party politics climbs as elections draw near, but partisan self-conception remain intact during peaks and lulls in party competition.”
― Donald P. Green, Partisan Hearts and Minds

“The percentage of voters who, according to their best Information, would vote to change the entire system, or to threaten it by going to war. It’s a small but not insignificant coalition of haves who think they deserve to be have-mores; nationalists who consider some aspect of identity (ethnicity, religion, place if birth) more important than the government one chooses; and all-out cranks and contrarians. Maybe six to eight percent.”
― Malka Ann Older, Infomocracy

“Anyone familiar with party systems has seen the disgust one party member is apt to show toward another whom he may really know nothing about other than that he is one of "the enemies." He cannot afford to know much about the person, for then he risks finding some redeeming feature in his enemy, and this is unacceptable. Any redemption for the enemy is a failure for propaganda which seeks separation between individuals; communion is defeat.”
― Daniel Schwindt, The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought

“Sabrina said they should be punished. She said there’s no going back after this, no living with them again. Not after what they have done.”

“I can see her point they declared war on reality and elected a maniac who almost broke the country. When he failed, they rose up and broke it themselves. You can’t reason with them, and they hate our guts.”
― Craig DiLouie, Our War

“Sonnet of Citizens

What can the politicians do,
Unless the people allow it!
What can the government do,
Unless the people permit it!
All corruption is born of people,
Not of politics and bureaucracy.
Corrupt politicians are only symptom,
Real disease is populist democracy.
Politics is civilized when people are civilized,
But what we have is politics of blame.
Denounce blaming and take responsibility,
Then only will your children live without shame.
Your indifference fuels all political histrionics.
Build your character and there'll be no politics.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Insan: When The World is Family

“The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“For many museums and libraries, there's a fear about getting involved in the contemporary issue--that you'll be pulled into the partisan times. I think you're gonna be pulled in no matter what. So the key is you should really, I think, do the best work you can to help a nation be made better. Yes, you're not gonna say that we're Democrat or Republican; what you're saying is that for the greater good of a nation, here are some of the ways we can move forward.”
― Lonnie G. Bunch III

“The Christmas decorations at the entrance were garish, incomprehensible, partisan. What kind of a country did we live in?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander

“Politicians are granted a certain degree of partisan leniency by their electorate, meaning their constituents will accept legislation they do not entirely agree with if, and only if, they are convinced withdrawing support would strengthen the opposition.”
― Michael Gurnow

“Converging with the results of studies by Kahan (2013) and Van Boven and colleagues (2017) are political science studies showing that various indices of cognitive sophistication such as educational level, knowledge level, and political awareness not only do not attenuate partisan myside bias but often increase it. For example, Mark Joslyn and Donald Haider-Markel (2014) found that highly educated partisan survey respondents were in greater disagreement about policy-relevant facts than less-educated partisan respondents were.”
― Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias That Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking

“Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. It was not unusual for figures such as Coughlin, Long, McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable minority—30 or even 40 percent—of the country. We often tell ourselves that America’s national political culture in some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties.”
― Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

“Partisanship is but hateful poetry often engaged in by those without any talent for rhyme.”
― C.A.A. Savastano