242 years, 45 presidents, yet only two dominant political parties. In the unending competition for political power, the idea of Democrat versus Republican polarizes citizens and erases meaningful discourse about our nation’s issues. The need to reflect on America’s true foundation ‒- the people ‒- is stronger than ever. Here are the 10 best quotes from our nation’s leaders that remind us to choose our country by transcending partisan politics:
1. Thomas Jefferson
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.”
2. Dwight D. Eisenhower
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”
3. Abraham Lincoln
“Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”
4. George Washington
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people…”
5. Franklin D. Roosevelt
“There should be no bitterness or hate where the sole thought is the welfare of the United States of America. No man can occupy the office of President without realizing that he is President of all the people.”
6. John Quincy Adams
“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
7. Herbert Hoover
“Being a politician is a poor profession. Being a public servant is a noble one.”
8. John F. Kennedy
“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
9. John Adams
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.”
10. Theodore Roosevelt
“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state.”