Shirley Williams Quotes

I care not for party. I stand here without party …. Englishmen, rid yourself of all that political jargon and factious slang of Whig and Tory

I’ve searched my conscience about leaving the Republican Party, and I decided it was better to change parties than to change my principles.

The Republican Party is an empty vessel unless we imbue it with values.

We are against political parties and we have none.

I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political opinion in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any particular political party—democratic or totalitarian—through study and comparison of principles.

Choose the politics of principle over the politics of personality.

This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.

However much I have been blamed for not showing more deference to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much

A party should be founded not merely on numbers, but on moral principles, without which it can neither accomplish useful work nor inspire confidence.

I have no exact political philosophy that I could summon up with one ism.

Principles aren't something you hear much from politicians these days. Have you noticed? Right across the board, leaders, whatever the political coloring, avoid talking about laws; they avoid talking about principles. They talk about 'our values.' But values can change, and all our packets of 'values' seem to be getting smaller.

The Republican party is not a church. It does not promulgate doctrine and then exclude those who fail to share it. But political parties must stand for something, or they will be unable to generate enthusiastic support from the volunteers needed to burn shoe leather and calories winning competitive elections.

'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.'

The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism. They're soft on Democracy.

The law of the land is We do not allow parties on a religious basis. We launch ourselves from our value system … but religion does not belong to any political party.

The two great political parties of the nation have existed for the purpose, each in accordance with its own principles, of undertaking to serve the interests of the whole nation.

What brought Conservatism into existence was the French Revolution.

The Conservative Party is a tax cutting party or it is nothing.

Wisdom is not the province of only one party.

All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas — and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists.

Of late I have felt, with increasing intensity, the injustice inflicted on women by our present laws. The Party is largely my own child and I cannot part from it lightly, or without pain; but at the same time I cannot sever myself from the principles I hold. If it is necessary for me to separate myself from what has been my life's work, I do so in order to remove the stigma resting upon our wives, mothers and sisters of being accounted unfit for citizenship

I cannot answer your question because I am neither a Democrat or a Republican. I am a constitutional monarchy.

There isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between politicians of either major party.

I no longer know of political party, I only know Germans

It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.