Now one was either Tory or Whig; it was either dependence…

“when it comes to the question of dependence or independence!—At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two.”

— Jane Austen

A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer - that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be…

— William Hazlitt

Lincoln was a modernizer, so to speak. He believed in economic development. As a Whig before the war he favored what we would call…

— Eric Foner

“Most American ideas were a part of the great tradition of the eighteenth-century common-wealthmen, the radical Whig ideology that arose from a series of…

— Robert Middlekauff

The Whig interpretation of history ... is the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions…

— Herbert Butterfield

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

— Abraham Lincoln

I am neither a Whig nor Tory. My politics are described in one word and that word is England.

— Benjamin Disraeli

I have always said, the first Whig was the Devil~

— Samuel Johnson

The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed…

— Thomas Jefferson

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong…

— Thomas Jefferson

We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig,' 'Free Democrat' or something else; though we think some simple…

— Horace Greeley

A Tory..., since the revolution, may be defined in a few words, to be a lover of monarchy, though without abandoning liberty; anda partizan…

— David Hume

The division into whig and tory is founded in the nature of men; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more…

— Anonymous

The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of…

— Thomas Jefferson

Remember that Abraham Lincoln was a Whig far longer than he was a Republican. As a whole, the Whigs looked upon banks and corporations…

— Allen C. Guelzo