Posterity will do justice to that unprincipled maniac Gladstoneöan extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisyand superstition and with one commanding characteristic.Whether Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition, whether preaching, praying, speechifying, or scribblingöneveragentleman.Heisso vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a parliamentary Constitution is not favourable to such ambitions. Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

-Disraeli, Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
c.1874  Letter.

Dinner parties are for eating, not mating.

-Fenwick, Millicent Hammond
Reminder to hostesses who only invite people in pairs. In the NewYork Times, 25 Sep1984.

   Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism, and from it, extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly, middle-class parties their nationalism.Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as crystal, the synthesis öGerman National Socialism.

-Goering, HermannWilhelm
  Speech, Berlin, 9  Apr.

Marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark, 22 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

The common wages of labour depends every where upon the contract usually made between those two parties whose interests are by no means the same†Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.8.

La presse exerce encore un immense pouvoir en Ame¤  rique. Elle fait circuler la vie politique dans toutes les portions de ce vaste territoire. C'est elle dont l'½il toujours ouvert met sans cesse a'   nu les secrets ressorts de la politique, et force les hommes publics a'   venir tour a' tour compara|"tre devant le tribunal de l'opinion. C'est elle qui rallie les inte¤  re"  ts autour de certaines doctrines et formule le symbole des partis; c'est par elle que ceux-ci se parlent sans se voir, s'entendent sans e"  tre mis en contact. The presshas enormous power in America.It isthe press that circulates political life through all parts of this vast territory. Its eye is always open, and making known the secret springs of politics, thus forcing public men to appear before the tribunal of public opinion. It is the press which rallies the interests of the community round certain principles and forms the creed of different parties. Through the press these parties can speak to each other without seeing each other, can listenwithout meeting.

-Tocqueville, Alexis Charles Henri Cle¤  rel de
^40  De la De¤  mocratie en Ame¤  rique (Democracy in America), vol.1, pt.2, ch.3.