Top 100 Partisan Quotes
#1. As a rule of thumb. Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislation that is partisan.
Thomas Sowell
#2. If America is to succeed in responding to these 21st Century challenges, our political system cannot continue to bog down in the mire of partisan gamesmanship.
Chuck Hagel
#3. Suddenly to change one's opinions and go over to another party. The most notable flop on record was that of Saul of Tarsus, who has been severely criticised as a turn-coat by some of our partisan journals.
Ambrose Bierce
#5. To call me a partisan hack is ludicrous. I am the least partisan person I know.
Tucker Carlson
#6. One recognises that the partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice, pushes even decent men cruelly to persecute innocent targets. One recognises it, and yet nobody suggests getting rid of the organisations that generate such evils.
Simone Weil
#7. The appointment of the next Supreme Court justice must be made in the people's interest and in the nation's interest, not in the interest of any partisan faction.
Patrick Leahy
#8. Political philosophy reaches for the best regime, a regime so good that it can hardly exist. Political science advances a theory - in fact, a number of theories - that promises to bring agreement and put an end to partisan dispute.
Harvey Mansfield
#9. Overriding all of them, however, was the memory of 1918, the belief that the Jews, wherever and whoever they might be, threatened to undermine the German war effort, by engaging in subversion, partisan activities, Communist resistance movements and much else besides.
Richard J. Evans
#10. Critics of Fox News have pointed out that Fox News does partisan propaganda, and there's ample evidence on a daily basis.
David Shuster
#11. Because of our failure to live out our beliefs, our own lack of moral clarity, and our meddling with partisan politics, Western culture no longer looks to Christianity as its moral source.
Philip Yancey
#12. I really don't think there's a lack of good will between members of the parties. I go back a long way with a lot of Republicans, so I don't think it's personal. But there does seem to be a much greater gap in both the philosophy and emphasis on partisan victories as opposed to policy development.
John Yarmuth
#13. US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
Daniel Barenboim
#14. I am a partisan and artisan of Europe. But I draw the lessons of my experience in government.
Laurent Fabius
#15. What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?
Rahm Emanuel
#16. I had escaped from my prior partisan mind-set (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later) and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.28
Jonathan Haidt
#17. It is time to set aside the old partisan bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling that comes from freeing parents to make different choices for their children.
George W. Bush
#18. We can't allow ourselves to descend down the rabbit hole of unbridled partisanship for partisan sake.
Mike Quigley
#19. Now is the time to show maximum responsibility. It is not the time to pay off old scores nor for sterile partisan recriminations. It is time to re-establish a climate of calmness and mutual respect.
Giorgio Napolitano
#20. The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.
John Avlon
#21. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that's what we have to change first. We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.
Barack Obama
#22. Surely to root politics out of art is a highly necessary undertaking: for the freedom of art, like that of science, depends entirely upon its objectivity and non-practical, non-partisan passion.
Wyndham Lewis
#24. Indeed it can be argued that to make a powerful film you must care about the subject, therefore powerful films tend to be both political and partisan in nature.
Ben Edwards
#25. What strikes me when I leave Washington is the extent to which there's a huge disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country. The rest of the country is not hyper partisan.
Mark McKinnon
#26. Elections have consequences. And I fundamentally believe - this is my personal opinion, I know it's a slightly partisan thing to say - to really do what we think needs to be done, we're going to have to win some elections.
Paul Ryan
#27. Caring for veterans shouldn't be a partisan issue. It should an American one.
Jennifer Granholm
#28. Making government more efficient and more effective need not be a partisan issue.
Martin O'Malley
#29. The sense of immunity felt by a particular group currently in power is bound to be illusory. That is made clear when we look at how partisan affiliation shapes people's sense of the dangers of state surveillance. What emerges is that yesterday's cheerleaders can quickly become today's dissenters.
Anonymous
#31. Welfare reform happened with reconciliation; half the Democrats voted for it. The Bush tax cuts happened with reconciliation; twelve Democratic Senators voted for it. You didn't have a real partisan issue on those times that it was used.
Kent Conrad
#32. We have a rare and perhaps small window of opportunity to set partisan differences aside, and attempt to achieve what many in recent years have felt was unreachable - greater retirement security for ourselves and our children.
Gordon Smith
#33. Due to the political nature of film, partisan film making, especially where the subject is close to the film makers hart, tend to be the norm, rather than the exception.
Ben Edwards
#34. I went to Washington several times at the request of different parties to talk about education reform. I used to always say I felt like I needed to take a shower after I left, because it was so partisan that I just really hated it.
Paul Sadler
#35. I am a strong partisan of second causes, and I believe firmly that the entire gallinaceous order has been merely created to furnish our larders and our banquets.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
#36. We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#37. Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.
Anthony Trollope
#38. I believe in pulling together to make the country better right rather than pulling, tearing it apart for partisan reasons. I think the country comes first.
Ted Turner
#39. The next step has to be the necessary step. It's always to put the immigrant community and the civil rights movement ahead of partisan politics.
Luis Gutierrez
#40. We're all tired of a Washington that has these partisan camps where nothing gets done.
Cory Booker
#41. I think the Senate ought to realize that I have to have about me those in whom I have confidence; and unless they find a real blemish on a man, I do not think they ought to make partisan politics out of appointments to the Cabinet.
Calvin Coolidge
#42. I've been the co-chair of the Non-Partisan Women's Caucus and vice-chair for several years, taking a leadership role in this women's organization.
Gwen Moore
#43. You see, party labels do not ensure unanimity any more than trying to cast the challenge we confront as a people through a partisan prism.
J. D. Hayworth
#44. I believe that 'advocacy journalism' is not an oxymoron. If that means that I'm going to disrupt the cable, partisan fracas of obsession over what this means from left and right, then so be it. I will be disruptive of it.
Chris Cuomo
#45. If journalism is the first draft of history, then talk radio provides an early glimpse into how the meaning of political events will be spun for ideological and partisan purposes.
Jackson Katz
#46. The nation, as you know, is at a critical point. At a time like this we can't risk partisan bickering and political posturing.'Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work and we citizens also have to rise to the occasion.
Mitt Romney
#47. The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.
Ambrose Bierce
#48. Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.
James Lileks
#49. Today in America we are no more 'post-racial' than we are 'post-partisan.' We have a long way to go.
Jennifer Granholm
#50. I don't judge a regime by the damning criticism of the opposition, but by the ingenuous praise of the partisan.
Jean Rostand
#51. Politics is too partisan, and sometimes patriotism is cast aside. Patriotism is honor and love of your country and your brothers and sisters. With politics I get the impression that it's all about what's good for the party and not necessarily what's good for the country.
Ricardo Montalban
#52. I don't back down. I don't cave when the pressure gets too great from these partisan political ideological forces.
Dan Rather
#53. The documented incidences of voter fraud are very rare, yet throughout the country, forces have mobilized in over 30 states to stop it. These efforts are very partisan.
John Lewis
#54. We haven't done anything. That has devolved into a partisan bickering of the kind that says Nero was fiddling while Rome burned.
Michael Scheuer
#55. He [Vronsky] himself felt that, except that crazy fellow married to Kitty Shcherbatsky, who, quite irrelevantly had with rabid virulence told him a lot of pointless nonsense, every nobleman whose acquaintance he had made had become his partisan.
Leo Tolstoy
#56. Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.
Enoch Powell
#57. Can policy be both wise and aggressively partisan? Ask any Republican worth his salt and the answer will be an unequivocal yes. Ask a Democrat of the respectable Beltway variety and he will twist himself into a pretzel denying it.
Thomas Frank
#59. In fact, the figure in The Last Supper is not a woman: only the most partisan reading can place Mary Magdalene in the scene. Viewers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have read the painting quite differently.
Ross King
#60. The administration still wants to govern from the far-left and that's going to produce kind a partisan result here in the Congress.
Mitch McConnell
#61. I used to wonder if the occasionally rough edges of politics were unique here under the Great North Star. But I ventured out a bit this past year, and I tell you that, as partisan quarrels go, ours really aren't so bad.
Sarah Palin
#62. From a Canadian partisan perspective, the more we can upgrade bitumen in Canada, the more we can create jobs in value added, in tax revenues for all Canadians.
N. Murray Edwards
#63. When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win.
Jonathan Haidt
#64. While I have worked hard to bring folks to the middle to craft common-sense solutions to the many problems that confront our nation, Washington is mired in gridlock, gamesmanship and constant partisan bickering.
Mike Ross
#65. After President Obama's election, efforts at othering Obama quickly became about smearing his non-partisan allies and ambassadors.
Christine Pelosi
#66. Refusing to lift sanctions and adopting tougher rhetoric toward Iran would not be partisan issues. Plenty of Democrats think that those actions are both good politics and good policy.
Elliott Abrams
#68. The real problem with big issues like Medicare is that both parties have to be brave at the same time. Every pollster will tell you not to do that to get partisan advantage. Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain. That is borderline treason.
Jim Cooper
#69. We can leave our legacy only if we are willing to change - to go beyond partisan labels, and to solve the problems facing Washingtonians.
Christine Gregoire
#70. I can say with absolute certainty that I will run for one of two offices: my state Senate seat or for the governor. I'm still trying to decide, but I do think people are ready for a change from the partisan, very fractured leadership we have in Texas.
Wendy Davis
#71. Even as a partisan Republican, I'm not sure a 40-year run is healthy for either party.
Ed Gillespie
#72. There's never a perfect bipartisan bill in the eyes of a partisan.
William J. Clinton
#73. American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds.
Shane Smith
#74. This is how the great post-partisan, post-racial, New Politics presidency ends-not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with a desperate election-eve plea for ethnic retribution.
Charles Krauthammer
#75. Congress needs strong parties, but it also needs the capacity to deal with budget and entitlement challenges that are likely beyond the reach of pure partisan exertion.
David Price
#76. Prescribed exercise, still ran through boskage between the partisan bivouacs. The circle of villas in the outskirts of the town abandoned precipitately by their owners had been allotted by the partisans to various official purposes. In the largest of these the Russian mission lurked invisibly.
Evelyn Waugh
#77. Let me start by saying that I do not enjoy nor relish the partisan role of attack dog. I never found any fun in that. I don't think it's constructive. I don't intend to become that here in the Senate.
Marco Rubio
#78. I hate politics. It's slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don't like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you're not on my side, you're the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice.
Mark Cuban
#79. ...we are partisan in favor of our own children and grandchildren, who we hope can live in a world that doesn't poison them when they drink the water, breathe the air, or make a living.
Bill Bigelow
#80. We simply must look beyond partisan goals and find common ground as Americans. It is imperative that the Members of Congress recognize that partisanship will not serve the American people.
Michael Crapo
#81. The general point that a political theory is, among other things, a partisan intervention, is well taken. So question about the actual political implication of a theory cannot be excluded as, in principle, irrelevant.
Raymond Geuss
#82. The military value of a partisan's work is not measured by the amount of property destroyed, or the number of men killed or captured, but by the number [of the enemy which] he keeps watching [him].
John S. Mosby
#83. There's only one way we're going to change our political climate and ensure we establish some respect in our discourse. And that is to show there is a real price to pay for being a disrespectful partisan idiot.
Mark McKinnon
#84. There seems no reason why patriotism and narrowness should go together, or why intellectual fair mindedness should be confounded with political trimming, or why serviceable truth should keep cloistered because not partisan.
Herman Melville
#85. One of the reasons I wanted to leave my position at Common Cause and return to politics was to regain the freedom to speak out politically - to not be constrained by a non-partisan organization.
Chellie Pingree
#86. It's true that if you advise politicians on economic policy in the U.S. today, you spend your time in a cross between inquiry and combat. You are always on the periphery of harsh partisan warfare that has nothing to do with substance.
Robert Shapiro
#87. I full well realize that politics is a rough and tumble business, but politics should not be reduced to lobbing partisan hand grenades. Politics is not war. Terrorism is.
Pat Roberts
#88. I urge the enactment of a civil service law so explicit and so strong that no partisan official will dare evade it, basing all rewards, promotions and salaries solely on merit, on loyalty and industry in the public service.
Arthur Capper
#89. Someone wrote a piece about Henry Green in The Partisan Review that was so intriguing that I got one of his novels, Loving, I believe, which was the first that came to attention in the United States.
Terry Southern
#90. I promised to have no partisan affiliation and no subsidy except advertising.
Benjamin Day
#91. I try not to spend too much time on partisan politics. Life's too short for that. I don't really believe that there have been many human problems solved by politics.
Dean Koontz
#92. He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.
Randall Jarrell
#93. There were times, though, when the women came together on a partisan basis. [When we stopped] the privatization of Social Security during George Bush, we linked arms.
Barbara Mikulski
#94. The letter writers span the spectrum from left to right. Members say they don't want this to become a partisan political issue. In fact, there are reasons administration officials have been cautious in making a genocide declaration.
Tom Gjelten
#95. The argument most commonly made in the filibuster's favor is crudely partisan: 'Our side may be in the majority now, but someday it will be in the minority, and when that happens we'll want to block the other side's extremist agenda.'
Timothy Noah
#96. Today, I think the attitude is that governing is not necessarily good politics, and the result is that it's much more partisan and much more divided.
Leon Panetta
#97. I'm really not a partisan political person. I remember when I was in Washington they kept trying to get me to say whether I was a Republican or a Democrat. I just said, my politics are children. That's all I know anything about.
Edward Zigler
#98. An Associated Press report called the President's antics 'Bible-thumping politics.' Clinton's message was decidedly religious and partisan, as was Governor's Cuomo's remarks as he 'also cited religious themes and maxims.' Why didn't the press, the ACLU, and People for the American Way cry foul?
Gary DeMar
#99. No partisan political activity transpired in my office during the recount period.
Katherine Harris
#100. A healthy degree of party unity among Democrats and Republicans has deteriorated into bitter partisan warfare.
Thomas E. Mann
