474 quotations about democracy, elections, politics and voting which will delight and/or enrage you.
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no
property, and vulgar employments.
-Aristotle
A democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost
without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
-Gore Vidal
A democracy needs an opposition, especially in time of war, precisely to
keep the government honest, and to point to whatever errors (or possible
errors) it finds in the government's actions.
-Eugene Volokh
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a
tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
A gaffe occurs not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth.
-Michael
Kinsley
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
-H.L.
Mencken
A hungry child knows no politics.
-Ronald Reagan
A lot has been said about politics; some of it complimentary, but most
of it accurate.
-Eric Idle
A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a
message. Apparently that message is, "Hey, look at me, I'm an idiot."
-Dennis
Miller
A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
-Dan
Quayle
A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one
discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until
one is stopped.
-Norman Mailer
A political convention just is not a place where you can come away with
any trace of faith in human nature.
-Murray Kempton
A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to
see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no
longer a political leader.
-Bernard Baruch
A politician is a guy who would lay down your life for his country.
-Mary
Louis Cecelia Texas Guinan
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both
ears to the ground.
-H.L. Mencken
A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one
for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.
-Carl
Sandburg
A politician will do anything to keep his job- even become a patriot.
-William
Randolph Hearst
A politician's willingness to listen to good advice rises in inverse
proportion to how badly he thinks he is doing.
-Pat Caddell
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order
to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and
submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a
streetwalker.
-H.L. Mencken
A society is not "free" merely because the freedoms the people are doing
away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.
-William
F. Buckley, Jr.
A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.
-Thomas B. Reed
A statesman is any politician it's considered safe to name a school
after.
-Bill Vaughan
A statesman makes the occasion, but the occasion makes the politician.
-G.S.
Hilliard
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-O. Henry
A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and
promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much
surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that
those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.
-H.G.
Wells
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything
real on real issues.
-Theodore Roosevelt
A week is a long time in politics.
-Harold Wilson
Advertising men and politicians are dangerous if they are separated.
Together they are diabolical.
-Phillip Adams
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
-Brooks
Atkinson
Alas, higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue,
or higher political wisdom.
-Aldous Huxley
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies,
evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
-George Orwell
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph or reason and justice
must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will
exert upon events in the political field.
-Albert Einstein
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
-John
Arbuthnot
All politics are based on the indifference of the majority.
-James
Reston
All politics is a matter of working hard without reward, or with a
living wage for a time, in the hope of booty later.
-Ernest
Hemingway
All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four
words in politics are "up to a point."
-George F. Will
All truly great achievements in history resulted from the actualization
of principles, not from the clever evaluation of political conditions.
-Henry
Kissinger
Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in
American politics.
-George Mitchell
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may
cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
-John
Quincy Adams
Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?
Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder.
We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over
a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't
even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But
instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when
the politicians say, "Stay the Course."
-Lee Iacocca
America is a democracy and has no Hitler, but I am afraid for her
future; there are hard times ahead for the American people, troubles
will be coming from within and without. America cannot smile away their
Negro problem nor Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are cosmic laws.
-Albert
Einstein
America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for
democracy- and won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-Bill
Vaughan
Americans believe that freedom was their invention. They have been known
to send peace-corps troops to Athens to teach the Greeks the meaning of
democracy.
-Peter Ustinov
Americans have a tendency to think the problem with politics lies with
their candidates and not themselves. The truth is Americans deserve the
blame for the state of our politics and the state of our media.
-Jonah
Goldberg
Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put
to the test, usually find it to be an "inconvenience." We have opted
instead for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay
through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us
around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.
-Frank
Zappa
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a
sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
-George
Eliot
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
-Simon
Cameron
An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.
-Adlai
E. Stevenson II
Any sufficiently advanced coup is indistinguishable from an election.
-John
Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)
Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average
voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.
-Elmer Davis
As an organized political group, the Communists have done nothing to
damage our society a fraction as much as what their enemies have done in
the name of defending us against subversion.
-Murray Kempton
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and
more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious
day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last
and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
-H.L.
Mencken
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my
idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the
difference, is no democracy.
-Abraham Lincoln
As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... unless they
have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be
too much of a good thing.
-Karl Rove
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are
used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by
destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people
will solemnly vote against their own interests.
-Gore Vidal
As the master politician navigates the ship of state, he both creates
and responds to public opinion. Adept at tacking with the wind, he also
succeeds, at times, in generating breezes of his own.
-Stewart
Udall
Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you.
Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.
-Bernard Levin
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-George
J. Nathan
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart
enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.
-Eugene
McCarthy
By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain
folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between
loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and
intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering
by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to
produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.
-Florence King
Children are the universal scapegoats for any political agenda.
-Unattributed
Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is
the fig leaf of elitism.
-Florence King
Churches are becoming political organizations... It probably will not be
long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon
theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not
liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be
destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church.
Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave.
-Robert
G. Ingersoll
Comedians and politicians each tell the audience what it wants to hear.
The difference is that the audience laughs at the comedian and the
politician laughs at the audience.
-Alexis A. Gilliland
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
-Peter
Ustinov
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
-Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you
what you think it is you want to hear.
-Alan Coren
Democracy demands that all of its citizens begin the race even.
Egalitarianism insists that they all finish even.
-Roger Price
Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too
seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big
themselves.
-C.S. Lewis
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions- it only guarantees
equality of opportunity.
-Irving Kristol
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the
majority is ignorant.
-John Simon
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
-James
Russell Lowell
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
-George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-Doug
Larson
Democracy is a genus, not a species. Getting a democracy is rather like
getting a "mammal" for a gift. Kittens are nice. Wolverines will lunch
on your eyeballs. You don't drop a wolverine in your friend's lap, and
then walk away feeling you've done him a favor, since "the best pets are
mammals."
-Will Wilkinson
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual
ignorance.
-H.L. Mencken
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man
who will get the blame.
-Laurence J. Peter
Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich
variety of individual differences.
-James Bryant Conant
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by
jackasses.
-H.L. Mencken
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary
possibilities in ordinary people.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
-Robert
Byrne
Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't
have to impress people you wish were dead.
-Johnny Carson
Democracy is fine by me, but sometimes I'm not sure about you. (song
lyrics)
-Garrison Keillor
Democracy is like a raft. It won't sink, but you'll always have your
feet wet.
-Russell B. Long
Democracy is mob rule, but with income taxes.
-Unattributed
Democracy is more cruel than wars or tyrants.
-Lucias Annaeus
Seneca
Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a
tommy gun.
-Winston Churchill
Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single
dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all
races, colors, and creeds.
-Johnny Carson
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey
cage.
-H.L. Mencken
Democracy is the crude leading the crud.
-Florence King
Democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in
one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its
head. This signifies that when the white man came to this country, it
was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the
wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.
-Johnny Carson
Democracy is the name we give to the people when we need them.
-Robert
Pelleve
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be
whether they are the powers that ought to be.
-Sydney J. Harris
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-E.B. White
Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve
to get it good and hard.
-H.L. Mencken
Democracy is too good to share with just anybody.
-Nigel Rees
Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them
something to hold onto- usually a mop or a leaf blower.
-Johnny
Carson
Democracy means free television; not good television, but free.
-Johnny
Carson
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if
you can stop people talking.
-Clement Attlee
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means
government by the badly educated.
-G.K. Chesterton
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who
doesn't grow up can be vice president.
-Johnny Carson
Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is
likely to be the milkman.
-Winston Churchill
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on
what to have for dinner.
-James Bovard
Democracy simply means the bludgeoning of the people by the people for
the people.
-Oscar Wilde
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment
by the corrupt few.
-George Bernard Shaw
Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared
understanding of limits.
-Elizabeth Drew
Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually
gets it all wrong?
-Don Marquis
Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to
find out if the polls were right?
-Robert Orben
Don't get mad. Don't get even. Just get elected, then get even.
-James
Carville
Don't vote. It only encourages them.
-Unattributed
During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa.
-Henry
Adams
Elected office holds more perks than Elvis' nightstand.
-Dennis
Miller
Elected officials should be limited to two terms: one in office and one
in prison.
-Kinky Friedman
Election year is that period when politicians get free speech mixed up
with cheap talk.
-J.B. Kidd
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote
against somebody rather than for somebody.
-Franklin P. Adams
Engineering is the implementation of science; politics is the
implementation of faith.
-Marc Stiegler
Envy is the basis of democracy.
-Bertrand Russell
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
-H.L.
Mencken
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a
democracy, the whores are us.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Every politician we have, liberal or conservative, who gets caught
drinking or chasing women is thrown out of office. It's backwards. It's
more dangerous to have a clean-living President with his finger on the
button. He thinks he's going right to heaven. You want to feel safe with
a leader? Give me a guy who fights in bars and cheats on his wife. This
is a man who wants to put off Judgment Day as long as possible.
-Larry
Miller
Everybody believes in democracy until he reaches the White House
-Thomas
Cronin
Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
-Charles Peguy
Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and
brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so
stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of
any political institution which is founded on it.
-John Adams
Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in
politics gets you oblivion.
-Richard M. Nixon
Florida's number three industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is
voter fraud.
-Dave Barry
Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to
expect solutions in a political campaign.
-Walter Lippmann
For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain
complaining about the sea.
-Enoch Powell
Free elections, a free press and an independent judiciary mean little
when the free market means they are on sale to the highest bidder.
-Arundhati
Roy
Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government
listens.
-Alasdair Farrugia
Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
-Frank
Dane
Give voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican, and they
will choose a Republican every time.
-Harry S Truman
Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American
people will vote for the less bald of the two.
-Vic Gold
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good.
-H.L. Mencken
Government is too big and important to be left to the politicians.
-Chester
Bowles
Half the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for
President- the same half?
-Gore Vidal
Here's the thing about rights. They're not supposed to be voted on.
That's why they call them rights.
-Rachel Maddow
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political
freedom. Clearly, it is not a sufficient condition.
-Milton
Friedman
How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran
instead of the politician.
-Henry Miller
I am tired of hearing that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't
work. We are supposed to work it.
-Alexander Woollcott
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy- but that could change.
-Dan Quayle
I didn't vote for change, but that's all I have left.
-Unattributed
I don't know a lot about politics, but I can recognize a good party man
when I see one.
-Mae West
I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics,
which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of
people.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is
ever inhibited by ignorance.
-Harold Macmillan
I have no use for those- regardless of their political party- who hold
some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized
labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that
does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no
man is born perpendicular.
-E.B. White
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and
as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
-Thomas
Jefferson
I like to remind people the choice the American electorate had in 1796
for candidates for President. You could choose between the chairman of
the American Society of Arts and Letters and the founding president of
the American Academy of Sciences. There's been a bit of a decline in the
standards of candidacy since then.
-Christopher Hitchens
I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons.
-Will Rogers
I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient
to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political
truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
-William F.
Buckley, Jr.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy.
-John Adams
I reject the cynical view that politics is inevitably, or even usually,
a dirty business.
-Richard M. Nixon
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all,
we've been voting for boobs long enough.
-Claire Sargent
I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans
were running the country. Which is turning out to be like shooting
yourself in the head to stop your headache.
-Jack Mayberry
I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who
are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.
-Maureen
Reagan
I'll be glad to either reply to or dodge your questions, whichever I
think will help our election most.
-George Herbert Walker Bush
I'm sorry, but voting for a presidential candidate because you like the
choice for vice president is like getting married to a woman because you
like her cat.
-Kevin G. Barkes
Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the
bow of idealism.
-Bill Moyers
Ideas matter in American politics, but results matter more.
-Dan
Balz
If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not
under siege, freedom is not at risk.
-Gary Ackerman
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination
to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a
political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.
-Dwight
D. Eisenhower
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would
promise them missionaries for dinner.
-H.L. Mencken
If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town
because of [chasing women] and drinking, you'd have no government.
-Barry
M. Goldwater
If God had wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.
-Jay
Leno
If one [political] party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines
would read "Views Differ on Shape of Planet."
-Paul
Krugman
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our
government is to function, it must have dissent.
-Henry Steele
Commager
If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected
swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.
-Orson
Scott Card
If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should
all be.
-Evelyn Waugh
If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates
(book title)
-Jim Hightower
If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and
start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the
thirteenth clown. (Walinsky's First Law of Political Campaigns)
-Unattributed
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
-Emma Goldman
If you begin by saying, "Thou shalt not lie," there is no longer any
possibility of political action.
-Jean-Paul Sartre
If you can't take money from people and then screw them, you have no
business being a politician.
-San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown,
Jr.
If you don't vote, then you may be leaving the decisions up to someone
dumber than you.
-Jesse Ventura
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to
a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.
-Ray
Bradbury
If you doubt that it is stinky personality that is the driving force
behind conservative politics, look back to your pre-political youth. A
dollar to a doughnut everyone of those childhood friends and
acquaintances who was an asshole then is a conservative today.
-Rack
Jite
If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics.
-Will
Rogers
If you make less than $50,000 a year and vote Republican, you are a
moron.
-Rack Jite
If you voted for change, you better start counting it.
-Unattributed
If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on
who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock
stars? Because we're morons.
-Alice Cooper
If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and
principles, come and join this campaign.
-George W. Bush
In 1929 the wise, far-seeing electors of my native Hereford sent me to
Westminster and, two years later, the lousy bastards kicked me out.
-Frank
Owen
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of
its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
-Senator J.
William Fulbright
In a democracy, the votes of the vicious and stupid count. On the other
hand, in any other system, they might be running the show. (from The
Boston Globe)
-Unattributed
In a democracy, you don't look up to people, you look sideways at your
fellow citizens.
-Robert Hughes
In a democracy, you say what you like and do what you're told.
-Dave
Barry
In a political fight, when you've got nothing in favor of your side,
start a row in the opposition camp.
-Huey P. Long
In America the absence of honest passion is a distinguishing feature of
both professional wrestling and politics.
-Murray Kempton
In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count
that votes.
-Mogens Jallberg
In every well governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies
it is the only sacred thing.
-Anatole France
In my lifetime, we've gone from Eisenhower to George W. Bush. We've gone
from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore. If this is evolution, I believe that in
twelve years, we'll be voting for plants.
-Lewis Black
In nature, stupidity gets you killed. In the workplace, it gets you
fired. In politics, it gets you re-elected.
-Bill VanRemmen
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
-Charles
de Gaulle
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents,
worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of
office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate
their character.
-P.J. O'Rourke
In our system, at about 11:30 on election night, they just push you off
the edge of the cliff and that's it. You might scream on the way down,
but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in
elective office.
-Walter Mondale
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible.
-George Orwell
In political combat, as in speed contests among horses, the outcome
becomes doubtful only after the entry of the second contestant.
-Warren
Burnett
In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the
electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
-Charles de Gaulle
In politics the middle way is none at all.
-John Adams
In politics there is no honor.
-Benjamin Disraeli
In politics you can't be true to all of your friends all of the time.
-Perry
S. Heath
In politics you have no friends, only allies.
-John F. Kennedy
In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that
you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on
you like wolves.
-R.A. Butler
In politics, a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of
friendship.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.
-San
Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr.
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything
done, ask a woman.
-Margaret Thatcher
In politics, nothing is contemptible.
-Benjamin Disraeli
In politics, nothing is permanent and, therefore, nothing is too late.
-Bill
Clinton
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
-Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
In the US the people are blinkered by the millions of flags that flutter
on the forest of poles and hang from every other window. They block the
political view and the thunder of their flapping means that even anxious
questions, let alone protests, cannot, will not, be heard.
-Phillip
Adams
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and
freedom are more than just ideals to be valued- they may be essential to
survival.
-Noam Chomsky
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no
right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of
rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.
-Ayn
Rand
Information is the currency of democracy.
-Thomas Jefferson
Instant analysis is the occupational disease. There are no smokestacks,
there's no black lung. Politics is the only industry.
-Kirk
O'Donnell
Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better
to change the locks.
-Doug Larson
It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole
country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides
politicians, entertainers, and criminals.
-Charles Kuralt
It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
-Unattributed
It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to
reveal everything that he knows.
-George Orwell
It is exciting to have a real crisis on your hands, when you have spent
half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the
environment.
-Margaret Thatcher
It is futile to try and win democracy abroad, while we are losing it at
home. (in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson)
-Upton Sinclair
It is known, however, that men enter local politics solely as a result
of being unhappily married.
-C. Northcote Parkinson
It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil,... that all
politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life
are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to
prescribe death as a cure.
-George McGovern
It makes no difference who you vote for- the two parties are really one
party representing four percent of the people.
-Gore Vidal
It's kind of ironic. The only time you can be really be sure that a
politician is telling the truth is when he's admitting that he's a crook.
-Jay
Leno
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-Tom
Stoppard
Just as it would be madness to settle on medical treatment for the body
of a person by taking an opinion poll of the neighbors, so it is
irrational to prescribe for the body politic by polling the opinions of
the people at large.
-Plato
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean
politics won't take an interest in you.
-Pericles
Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free
man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through
change and reform. One can see why the word had to be erased from our
political lexicon.
-Gore Vidal
Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.
-John
Boynton Priestley
Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of
political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of
the individual voter.
-Erich Fromm
Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights.
Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have
for supper.
-Larry Flynt
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's
inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-Reinhold
Neibuhr
Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces.
-Henry
Adams
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President but they don't
want them to become politicians in the process.
-John F. Kennedy
My early choice in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse
or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.
-Harry
S Truman
My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general.
"They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have
to."
-Gore Vidal
My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an
individual and no man idolized.
-Albert Einstein
My political life has been informed by the view that if there was any
truth to religion there wouldn't really be any need for politics.
-Christopher
Hitchens
Never judge a country by its politicians.
-Alfred Hitchcock
Never pass up an opportunity to appear on C-Span. C-Span viewers vote.
-Lamar
Alexander
Never vote for the best candidate. Vote for the one who will do the
least harm.
-Frank Dane
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.
-Henry
Kissinger
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard
working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all
the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-Lily Tomlin
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a
democracy out of an illiterate people.
-Walter Lippmann
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of
power.
-Jacob Bronowski
Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a
winning candidate.
-Mark B. Cohen
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
-John
Kenneth Galbraith
Nothing would induce me to vote for giving women the franchise. I am not
going to be hen-pecked into a question of such importance. (in 1910)
-Winston
Churchill
Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more
statesmen.
-Bob Edwards
Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no
immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far as blather and
sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
-Anton
Chekhov
Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of
the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to
drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the
people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country
to greater danger. (At the Nuremberg Trials)
-Herman Goering
On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the
only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no
matter what it does.
-Will Rogers
Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected
Vice-President- and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.
-Thomas
Marshall
Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the
fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide
depression all by myself.
-Herbert Hoover
One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.
-Claude Pepper
One of the merits of democracy is quite obvious: it is perhaps the most
charming form of government ever devised by man. The reason is not far
to seek. It is based on propositions that are palpably not true- and
what is not true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more
fascinating and satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true.
-H.L.
Mencken
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you
end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato
Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy,
for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government
ever heard of on earth.
-H.L. Mencken
Only lie about the future. (to politicians)
-Johnny Carson
Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
-Matt Taibbi
Our elections are free, it's in the results where eventually we pay.
-Bill
Stern
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more
likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take
advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than
nature made them.
-Bertrand Russell
Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to
clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.
-Michael
Novak
People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
-Will
Rogers
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an
election.
-Otto von Bismarck
People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man
does not vote for anything but against something.
-H.H. Munro Saki
People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need
politics, they have jobs.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which
endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they
actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally
muster.
-James Harvey Robinson
Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably
turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on
race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
-Paul
Krugman
Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the
state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state
controls religion.
-Samuel J. Ervin
Political history is far too criminal and pathological to be a fit
subject for study for the young. Children should acquire their heroes
and villains from fiction.
-W.H. Auden
Political language- and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists- is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind.
-George Orwell
Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.
-Hannah
Arendt
Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral,
not important. History is the same thing over and over again.
-Woody
Allen
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
-Tom Lehrer
Politically popular speech has always been protected: even the Jews were
free to say "Heil Hitler."
-Isaac Asimov
Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be
changed regularly and for the same reason.
-Gerry Brooks
Politicians and journalists share the same fate in that they often
understand tomorrow the things they talk about today.
-Helmut
Schmidt
Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next election.
They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.
-Buckminster
Fuller
Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue.
Fleas are interested in dogs.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.
-Bennett
Cerf
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the
tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.
-John Quinton
Politicians are swine. You cannot reason with swine. You must hit them
on the nose with a stick.
-Bertolt Brecht
Politicians are the same the world over. They promise to build a bridge
where there is no river.
-Nikita Kruschev
Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are
an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
-George
F. Will
Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to
detain them at the bottom.
-Peter Ustinov
Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef
from pork.
-Harold Lowman
Politics and the shape of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and
without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't concern
themselves with politics.
-Albert Camus
Politics are a lousy way for a free man to get things done. Politics
are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war,
you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
-Winston
Churchill
Politics are not the task of a Christian.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
-Vera
Brittain
Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
-Paul
Krugman
Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get
beat with.
-Will Rogers
Politics have no relation to morals.
-Niccolò Machiavelli
Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are
fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
-Albert Einstein
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that
others are wrong.
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Politics is about compromises... really stupid compromises.
-Bill
Maher
Politics is about who wins and loses. The rest is of marginal interest.
-Sean
Wilentz
Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in
the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.
-George McGovern
Politics is applesauce.
-Will Rogers
Politics is applied biology.
-Ernst Haeckel
Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.
-Jimmy
Durante
Politics is how you live your life, not whom you vote for.
-Jerry
Rubin
Politics is just like show business, you have a hell of an opening,
coast for a while and then have a hell of a close.
-Ronald Reagan
Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
-Unattributed
Politics is like a race horse. A good jockey must know how to fall with
the least possible damage.
-Edouard Herriot
Politics is like the bumper cars at the amusement park. It's a delusion
to think that by refusing to move, you can protect yourself from being
hit. (From The Weekly Standard)
-Unattributed
Politics is like the stock market: it's a bad business for people who
can't afford to lose.
-Richard M. Nixon
Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.
-Dalton Camp
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards,
if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
-Ronald
Reagan
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between
the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is
thought necessary.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
Politics is show business for ugly people.
-Sonny Bono
Politics is the art of controlling your environment.
-Hunter S.
Thompson
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
-Groucho
Marx
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists
or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
-Ernest
Benn
Politics is the art of postponing decisions until they are no longer
relevant.
-Henri Queuille
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs
which properly concern them.
-Paul Valery
Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without
possessing merit.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-Ambrose
Bierce
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.
-Frank Zappa
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
-Oscar
Ameringer
Politics is the pursuit of trivial men who, when they succeed at it,
become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
-George J. Nathan
Politics is the science of who gets what, when, and why.
-Sidney
Hillman
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
-Lester B. Pearson
Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.
-Jim
Hightower
Politics should be limited in scope to war, protection of property, and
the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class.
-P.J.
O'Rourke
Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the
goddamned people.
-Richard M. Nixon
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organization of hatreds.
-Henry Adams
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned
with right or left instead of right or wrong.
-Richard Armour
Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
-Ambrose
Bierce
Politics: the art of keeping as many balls as possible up in the air at
one time- while protecting your own.
-Sam Attlesey
Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates
themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.
-Jimmy
Breslin
Practical politics consists of ignoring facts.
-Henry Adams
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to
faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost
faith in everything we fight and spend for.
-Adlai E. Stevenson II
Ralph Nader is as much of politician as Bob Packwood, only he's not as
smooth with the ladies.
-P.J. O'Rourke
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and
murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit
suicide.
-John Adams
Self-esteem is the basis of any democracy.
-Gloria Steinem
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you
would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a
tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things...
a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or
business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are
stupid.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is always astonished
when others do.
-Charles de Gaulle
Some politician some years ago said that bad officials are elected by
good voters who do not vote.
-Dwight D. Eisenhower
Son, if you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, screw their
women, and then vote against 'em, you don't deserve to be here.
-Sam
Rayburn
Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can
turn to chicken salad.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
-Shimon
Peres
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make
and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution
which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act
of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.
-George
Washington
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with
the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a
street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he
doesn't lie.
-Theodore H. White
The biggest and most pertinent lesson in history-at least for
democracies-is that they cannot take their existence for granted.
-Norman
Cousins
The central conservative truth is that is it culture, not politics, that
determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that
politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
-Daniel
Patrick Moynihan
The death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination by ambush.
It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and
undernourishment.
-Robert M. Hutchins
The difference between a politician and a statesman is: a politician
thinks of the next election and a statesman thinks of the next
generation.
-James Freeman Clarke
The difference between a prostitute and a politician is that there are
some things a prostitute won't do for money.
-Unattributed
The difference between a real horse race an election is that in a horse
race the whole horse wins.
-Unattributed
The difference between corporations and governments is governments have
a monopoly on force. It's a lot easier to vote with your feet or your
wallet than it is to change a government with your vote.
-P.J.
O'Rourke
The difference between politics and baseball is that in baseball, when
you get caught stealing, you're out.
-Ron Dentinger
The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy
is like saying the cure for crime is more crime.
-H.L. Mencken
The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do
not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. (speech at the
1787 Constitutional Convention)
-Elbridge Gerry
The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of
democracy.
-Theodore H. White
The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change
society.
-Paul Krugman
The good news is I'm leading in the polls. The bad news is the election
isn't tomorrow.
-George W. Bush
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to
do something stupid.
-Art Spander
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without
proving that you are unworthy of winning.
-Adlai E. Stevenson II
The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
-Voltaire
(François Marie Arouet)
The introduction of religious passion into politics is the end of honest
politics, and the introduction of politics into religion is the
prostitution of true religion.
-Lord Hailsham
The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as
though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against
ever hearing the truth about anything.
-Aldous Huxley
The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.
-William C.
Westmoreland
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to
admit that each party is worse than the other.
-Will Rogers
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer
decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions:
kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party
dictatorships, or modern corporations.
-Noam Chomsky
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis
Brandeis
The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep
in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election.
-George
Carlin
The office of the president is such a bastardized thing, half royalty
and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.
-Jimmy
Breslin
The only difference between [George W.] Bush and [Adolf] Hitler is that
Hitler was elected.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The only way to win an election by a greater margin than Saddam Hussein
in Iraq is to be a Democratic candidate in Chicago.
-John
Alejandro King (The Covert Comic)
The organization of American society is an interlocking system of
semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously
unenlightened, misled by a mass media notoriously phony.
-Paul
Goodman
The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a
people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a
straitjacket.
-Ronald Reagan
The political arena leaves one no alternative; one must either be a
dunce or a rogue.
-Emma Goldman
The political spectrum isn't a line so much as a circle, and no matter
which direction you head from 12 o'clock, you eventually wind up on the
bottom by the hatch where the cuckoos pop out.
-Tamara K (Indiana
blogger)
The politician is an acrobat. He keeps his balance by saying the
opposite of what he does.
-Maurice Barres
The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face.
(on campaigning)
-Clare Boothe Luce
The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than
anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant
scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A
Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment- social,
political, or ethical- can raise a storm of protest. We give the
President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man
should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and
rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all
this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty
or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy
him.
-John Steinbeck
The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
-Henry Cote
The proposition, that the people are the best keepers of their own
liberties, is not true; they are the worst conceivable; they are no
keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a
political body.
-John Adams
The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse:
You cannot post "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit
adultery," and "Thou shalt not lie" in a building full of lawyers,
judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.
-George
Carlin
The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much
trouble to put makeup on two faces.
-Maureen Murphy
The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work; then
they get elected and prove it.
-P.J. O'Rourke
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His
failure is ignominious and his success disgraceful.
-H.L. Mencken
The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come
from within.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
-James
Fenimore Cooper
The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or
quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
-Molly Ivins
The thing about politicians is, you have to take the smooth with the
smooth.
-Susan Hill
The trouble with politicians debating each other is that there isn't any
subject that's any of their business.
-Robert Brault
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who
believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of
the people all of the time.
-Franklin P. Adams
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first,
the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and
second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.
-Edward
Dowling
The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers.
-Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr.
The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than any
temporary failures of democracy.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and
hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless
series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-H.L. Mencken
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of
stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
-Gustave Flaubert
The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly," meaning "many," and
the word "ticks," meaning "blood sucking parasites."
-Larry
Hardiman
The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.
-John
Jay Chapman
The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile,
but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four
hundred imbeciles.
-Robert Anton Wilson
There are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who
practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican
Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party, and our
country.
-John McCain
There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and
waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.
-Alan Clark
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
-John
Kenneth Galbraith
There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to
lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth.
-Adlai
E. Stevenson II
There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain
to the masses that cows can be eaten.
-Indira Gandhi
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has
been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread
winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the
false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as
your knowledge."
-Isaac Asimov
There is but one way for a newspaperman to look at a politician and that
is down.
-Frank H. Simonds
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is
not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
-Benjamin Disraeli
There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do
you think the federal government spends too much money and they should
spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things,
like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH,
medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty
soon you've proved that what the American public is against is
arithmetic.
-Bill Gates
These days many politicians are demanding change. Just like homeless
people.
-George Carlin
They'd [politicians] do the right thing, if they thought they could get
away with it.
-A. Ernst Fitzgerald
Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the
great people of America sometimes sounds faint, and sometimes sounds
distant in that strange city. You hear politics until you wish that both
parties were smothered in their own gas.
-Woodrow Wilson
Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't "stand for
election", they "run for office."
-Jessica Mitford
Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.
-Bertolt
Brecht
Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never
understand either of them.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the
citizens of a democracy.
-Bertrand Russell
To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well
as morals.
-William Penn
To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.
-Hubert H.
Humphrey
Tolerance is an admirable intellectual gift, but it is worth little in
politics.
-Woodrow Wilson
Too often in politics, there are fallacious either/or arguments put up
as a justification or an excuse for an action or view which is skewed in
such a way as too suggest that there is only one acceptable choice.
-Peter
Garrett
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our
ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.
-G.K. Chesterton
Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics.
-George
McGovern
Truth is not determined by majority vote.
-Doug Gwyn
Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out
of basketball.
-Bill Bradley
Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying
to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-and both commonly
succeed, and are right.
-H.L. Mencken
Under every stone lurks a politician.
-Aristophanes
Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted
them in, in the first place.
-Noam Chomsky
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
-Bernard
Baruch
Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
himself and a wreck of his country.
-Ambrose Bierce
Voters quickly forget what a man says.
-Richard M. Nixon
Voting is like driving... you choose "D" to move forwards and "R" to go
backwards.
-Unattributed
We already know the winners of the next election. They'll be old white
men who don't care about you or your problems.
-Craig Kilborn
We are at the point where the integrity of the individual counts and not
what the political leadership or the religious leadership says to do.
-Buckminster
Fuller
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. (in 1939)
-Louis
Brandeis
We elect Democrats to the Congress to give us stuff and we elect
Republicans to the White House so we don't have to pay for it.
-Charlie
McDowell
We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.
-Martin
L. Gross
We live under a republican form of government. We need forever to
remember that representative government does represent. A careless,
indifferent representative is the result of a careless, indifferent
electorate. The people who start to elect a man to get what he can for
his district will probably find they have elected a man who will get
what he can for himself.
-Calvin Coolidge
We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest
democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of
militarised republic. The founding fathers hated two things, one was
monarchy and the other was democracy, they gave us a constitution that
saw to it we will have neither. I don't know how wise they were.
-Gore
Vidal
We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate.
-Frank
McKinney (Kin) Hubbard
We're more than just politicians. We're more than just the cynical,
venal, narrow, corrupt profession that all too often is a reflection of
the current culture. We are in fact the inheritors and the lifeblood of
freedom.
-Newt Gingrich
Well, sure, the government lies, and the newspapers lie. But in a
democracy, they aren't the same lies.
-Alexis A. Gilliland
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
-Mohandas K. Ganhdi
What does an actor know about politics?
-Ronald Reagan
What is morally wrong cannot be politically right.
-William
Gladstone
What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should
not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands.
-Alexis
de Tocqueville
What's real in politics is what the voters decide is real.
-Ben J.
Wattenberg
When a politician changes his position it's sometimes hard to tell
whether he has seen the light or felt the heat.
-Robert Fuoss
When a politician starts preaching, I tend to react the same way as when
a preacher starts talking politics. I become very, very wary.
-Madeleine
Albright
When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.
-P.J.
O'Rourke
When I die, I want to be buried in Chicago, so I can still be active in
politics.
-Charlie Rangel
When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take
from journalism.
-Jim Hightower
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be
philosophers.
-Walter Lippmann
When political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of
abuse is wheeled into action.
-Adlai E. Stevenson II
When politicians complain that TV turns proceedings into a circus, it
should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has
merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.
-Edward
R. Murrow
When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a
sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge,
they fail to see the cliff ahead of them.
-Frank Herbert
When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe
nothing can stand in their way.
-Frank Herbert
When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the
pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power.
-Alston
Chase
When you get into politics, you find that all your worst nightmares
about it turn out to be true, and the people who are attracted to large
concentrations of power are precisely the ones who should be kept as far
away from it as possible.
-Ken Livingstone
Whenever a fellow tells me he is bipartisan, I know he's going to vote
against me.
-Harry S Truman
Why take a chance on a candidate who might lose? You can always buy them
after the election.
-Santo Trafficante, Jr.
Without alienation, there can be no politics.
-Arthur Miller
Without faith we might relapse into scientific or rational thinking,
which leads by a slippery slope toward constitutional democracy.
-Robert
Anton Wilson
Years ago, fairy tales all began with "Once upon a time..." Now we know
they all begin with "If I am elected."
-Carolyn Warner
Yet in all our rejoicing let us neither express, nor cherish, any harsh
feeling towards any citizen who, by his vote, has differed with us. Let
us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a
common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal
feeling.
-Abraham Lincoln
You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You
must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
-G.K.
Chesterton
You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
-Molly
Ivins
You know I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation.
I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil
business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get
elected to public office. (In 1989)
-George W. Bush
You know the one group I never criticize? Politicians. Politicians are
put there by the public. Garbage in, garbage out. You get the leadership
you deserve.
-George Carlin
You live in a democracy. You don't work in one.
-Douglas Dahlberg
You say we [reporters] are distracting from the business of government.
Well, I hope so. Distracting a politician from governing is like
distracting a bear from eating your baby.
-P.J. O'Rourke
You will never escape the will of the mob. About the best anyone has
ever figured out to do is herd them into voting booths.
-Barry
Shein
Categories: Quotes of the day
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