Partisan Quotes

“Prejudice wears a variety of hats, none of them becoming.”
― Kevin Ansbro

“The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts.”
― George Washington, George Washington's Farewell Address

“Non poteva più vivere senza sapere e, soprattutto, non poteva morire senza sapere, in un'epoca in cui i ragazzi come lui erano chiamati più a morire che a vivere. Avrebbe rinunciato a tutto per quella verità, tra quella verità e l'intelligenza del creato avrebbe optato per la prima.”
― Beppe Fenoglio, Una questione privata

“The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms; the principle of hereditary Monarchy continued to furnish the State with certain specific and inimitable advantages.

Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The King personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. Consecrated as he is to the service of his peoples, he possesses a religious sanction and is regarded as someone set apart from ordinary mortals. In an epoch of change, he remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. A legitimate Monarch moreover has no need to justify his existence, since he is there by natural right. He is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure.

The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his personal prejudices or affections, he is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.”
― Harold Nicholson

“I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.”
― George Soros

“The world order needs a major overhaul.”
― George Soros, The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror

“Support individuals, not parties.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mad About Humans: World Maker's Almanac

“Some people would regard people who look like they do as ugly if they did not look like them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are torn to pieces by parties and animosities. For my part I see no end to them.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Arnold's notion of the intellectual as disinterested critic distinguished him from both Marx and Hegel. For Marx, the proper function of the intellectual was to be a partisan on behalf of the proletariat, criticizing bourgeois society for its fundamental, structural oppression. For Hegel, the role of the intellectual was to stand above particular group interests, and to bring to consciousness the ethical basis of modern, capitalist society, in the process creating standards by which to guide politics and culture. Arnold's conception of "aliens" has obvious affinities with this Hegelian image of the intellectual. But "disinterestedness" for Arnold had a rather different meaning. It implied the ability to free oneself from partisanship, to take a distanced enough view to be able to criticize the side of the issue to which one had been committed, as circumstances required. "Living by ideas" he wrote, means that "when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam-engine and can imagine no other--still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question..." The role of the intellectual, then, was to embody and encourage that quality of mind that allowed individuals to get some distance from their social, political, and economic milieu; to reflect critically, and to be carried away by truth. (p. 227)”
― Jerry Z. Muller, The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought

“Era un gioco molto bello, questo della guerra. Io avevo diciott'anni e mi ci sono divertito assai. Era divertente mettersi lo Sten a tracolla e le bombe a mano alla cintola. E ancora più divertente sparare. Ma, vedete, non era un gioco la guerra. Ci siamo sbagliati. Guardate i miei occhi vitrei, la bava sanguigna che mi esce dalla bocca, e quest'orribile colore giallo sparso per tutto il mio corpo! Credevamo di giocare, ed era invece una cosa terribile, spaventosa! Smettete, ragazzi, voi che siete in tempo!”
― Carlo Cassola, Fausto e Anna

“We conflate "political" and "partisan," and we isolate legislative and electoral means of social engagement as the only ones tainted by sin.”
― Kaitlyn Schiess, The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor

“Look out the window of the train: you’re moving, but you can’t remember leaving. Jagged brown crater dwellings run across the landscape, pipes with thick black smoke pouring out. Smoke overflowing, as the buildings themselves are caked with a sort of black tar.
Evening sun peeks over the horizon through rusted steel water towers and other ancient skeletons. Their frames stand fixed, albeit hunched forward, anchored in by the ankles in scrap iron dunes that stretch for miles with frigid desert rats scurrying through as giant shivering Scarabs hover in the sky: wired-in and vigilant, murmuring ancient mantras, overshadowing newer, but desperately cruel partisan inscriptions of code in the soot-stained brick facade.

Look at your superimposed reflection in the window across from your seat and envision subatomic particles acquiring sentience in the vacuum of an Accelerator. All wondering how it is they got there, who it is they presume to be.

Always wondering. Spiraling...really! Always spiraling at breakneck speeds through the vacuum—eternally in doubt. You are suddenly reminded of the words of that great Algorithmist painter, Carlotta Wakefield, 'Mediocre painters portray that which they understand. Fabulous painters: that which they Surmise...'

You wonder if that, too, applies to our constructions of reality, ersatz or otherwise.

(From the short story "Leapfrog")”
― Ashim Shanker, trenches parallax leapfrog

“A mine is anonymous, a crude weapon. Partisans like using mines because of the peculiar nature of their struggle, which makes the landscape uncertain. The anarch is not tempted by them, if only because he is oriented to facts, not ideas. He fights alone, as a free man, and would never dream of sacrificing himself to having one inadequacy supplant another and a new regime triumph over the old one. In this sense, he is closer to the philistine; the baker whose chief concern is to bake good bread; the peasant, who works his plough while armies march across his fields.

The anarch is a forest rebel, the partisans are a collective. I have observed their quarrels as both a historian and a contemporary. Stuffy air, unclear ideas, lethal energy, which ultimately puts abdicated monarchs and retired generals back in the saddle – and they then show their gratitude by liquidating those selfsame partisans. I had to love certain ones, because they loved freedom, even though the cause did not deserve their sacrifice; this made me sad.

If I love freedom above all else, then any commitment becomes a metaphor, a symbol. This touches on the difference between the forest rebel and the partisan: this distinction is not qualitative but essential in nature. The anarch is closer to Being. The partisan moves within the social or national party structure, the anarch is outside of it. Of course, the anarch cannot elude the party structure, since he lives in society.

The difference will be obvious when I go to my forest shack while my Lebanese joins the partisans. I will then not only hold on to my essential freedom, but also gain its full and visible enjoyment. The Lebanese, by contrast, will shift only within society; he will become dependent on a different group, which will get an even tighter hold on him.

Naturally, I could just as well or just as badly serve the partisans rather than the Condor – a notion I have toyed with. Either way, I remain the same, inwardly untouched. It makes no difference that it is more dangerous siding with the partisans than with the tyrant; I love danger. But as a historian, I want danger to stand out sharply.

Murder and treason, pillage and fire, and vendetta are of scant interest for the historian; they render long stretches of history – say, Corsican – unfruitful. Tribal history becomes significant only when, as in the Teutoburger Wald, it manifests itself as world history. Then names and dates shine.

The partisan operates on the margins; he serves the great powers, which arm him with weapons and slogans. Soon after the victory, he becomes a nuisance. Should he decide to maintain the role of idealist, he is made to see reason.

In Eumeswil, where ideas vegetate, the process is even more wretched. As soon as a group has coalesced, ‘one of Twelve’ is bound to consider betrayal. He is then killed, often merely on suspicion. At the night bar, I heard the Domo mention such a case to the Condor.

‘He could have gotten off more cheaply with us,’ he commented. ‘Muddle heads – I’ll take the gangsters anytime: they know their business.’

I entered this in my notebook. In conclusion, I would like to repeat that I do not fancy myself as anything special for being an anarch. My emotions are no different from those of the average man. Perhaps I have pondered this relationship a bit more carefully and am conscious of a freedom to which ‘basically’ everybody is entitled – a freedom that more or less dictates his actions.”
― Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

“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

“Subhas Chandra Bose not died in a plane crash at the front, had Bhagat Singh not been hanged by the British, and had Gandhi not been killed by a Hindu extremist moron, Bharat, Pakistan and Bangladesh together would be shining as the brightest beacon of multiculturalism on the face of earth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“To a partisan hammer, every aspect of the 'other' looks like a nail.”
― R. N. Prasher

“I would rather drift aimlessly on the turbulent stream of idle discourse than be even in the vicinity of nauseous, turbid effluent of partisan ideological disquisition.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Power through paranoia - politics 101.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator