16 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson about Party

  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
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    In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    Printers shall be liable to legal prosecution for printing and publishing false facts injurious to the party prosecuting: but they shall be under no other restraint.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    The happiness of society depends so much on preventing party spirit from infecting the common intercourse of life, that nothing should be spared to harmonize and amalgamate the two parties in social circles.

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  • Author Thomas Jefferson
  • Quote

    If I could not go to heaven with but a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much further from that of the anti-federalists.

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