Political divisions of the United States describes the various subnational entities that together form the United States. The primary division is the state. The United States Federal and State governments operate within a system of parallel sovereignty, so states are not technically "divisions" created from the United States, but rather units that, together with the federal district and other territories administered by the Federal government, comprise the United States.
States are typically subdivided into counties. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the Census terms county-equivalents in those states.
Counties and county equivalents may be further subdivided into townships. Towns in New York and New England are treated equivalent to townships by the United States Census Bureau. Towns or townships are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.
Population centers may be organized into incorporated cities, towns, villages, and other types of municipalities. Municipalities are typically subordinate to a county government, with some exceptions. Certain cities, for example, have consolidated with their county government as consolidated city-counties. In Virginia, cities are completely independent from the county in which they would otherwise be a part. In some states, particularly New England, towns form the primary unit of local government below the state level, in some cases eliminating the need for county government entirely.
Outside of the states, other divisions include the federal district, insular areas administered by the Federal government, and American Indian reservations. The Federal government also maintains exclusive jurisdiction over the military installations, and American embassies and consulates located in foreign countries. Other special purpose divisions exist separate from those for general governance, examples of which include conservation districts and Congressional districts.
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“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Regna regnis lupi, The State is a wolf unto the State. It is not a pessimistic lamentation like the old homo homini lupus [Man is a wolf to Man], but a positive creed and political ideal.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“I find myself ... hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)