From My Notebook – "These Parties"

Our misfortune with the parties is like our misfortune with literature. It is the absence of disinterestedness and sincerity.

We praise so-and-so the man of letters, or the scholar, or the man of culture, not because we find him worthy of esteem, but because he is our friend, and because praising him is something personal interest requires.

And we join such-and-such a party not because we admire its principles, or because we burn with the fire of patriotic zeal, but so that we may have among its members partisans and helpers to back us at need, and so that we may make of the party a mount to ride to office, to power and influence.

'He who has no backing has a broken back,' says our popular proverb. And whoever does not belong to a party, or found a party to spread propaganda for him and set up banners and placards for him — his fame is lost and his story folded away.

If you see a man walking the earth merrily, turning his cheek scornfully to people, say that he is a member of one of the parties; that behind him are hundreds and thousands of heroes ready to rally round him, to support him in every profit-seeking scheme, to screen his mistakes and cover his faults.

Whatever your standing among people, if you have selfish ambitions and swaggering schemes, then hasten to join one of the parties, or found yourself a party — for without this you are doomed to failure.