January 19, 2025

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American essayist, poet and philosopher, Journals (1831), in The Cynic’s Lexicon, Jonathon Green, ed. (London: 1986), p.72

How much of a “yes man” or “yes woman” have you become as a member of a political party or sub-set thereof?

This thought is far more memorable when put to music, as in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore: “I always voted at my party’s call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all”.