A black man voting for the Republicans makes about as much sense as a
chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
-Buddy Watts, Sr.
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 low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
-Dan
Quayle
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 straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-O. Henry
Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of
the central obligations of American citizenship.
-Sarah Vowell
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
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
And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to
intolerant groups.
-Wendell Willkie
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 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 to my political faith- I have never voted. My father was a Democrat,
my mother a Republican, and I am an Episcopalian.
-George C.
Marshall
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
Jean Nathan
Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but
it's a stinking way to create.
-Lillian Hellman
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
-Robert
Byrne
Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people.
It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that
they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes
Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well. It means that everybody
should have a job, if he's willing to work, and an education, and the
right to bring up his children without fear of the future. And it means
that the old shall be provided for, without shame to themselves or to
their families. It means do unto others as you would have others do unto
you. It also means the prayers of the pilgrim fathers in the wilderness,
and the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United
States, and the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and
the dreams of an immigrant mother for her children. And that's what I
believe in.
-Dalton Trumbo
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on
what to have for dinner.
-James Bovard
Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going
to pay for a landslide.
-Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
Don't vote. It only encourages them.
-Unattributed
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote
against somebody rather than for somebody.
-Franklin P. Adams
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals
suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote.
-Paul
Harvey
Every American election summons the individual voter to weigh the past
against the future.
-Theodore H. White
Every guy looks in his pocket and then votes.
-Will Rogers
Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find
themselves unable to register an effective political protest against
extermination do so by a biological act.
-Lewis Mumford
Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world
you want.
-Anna Lappe
Everybody says not enough people vote. Now, I don't know nothing, but
after the midterms, pretty obvious to me, that too many people vote.
-Will
Durst
Finally, it occurs to me that the biggest problem with our elections is
that however you vote, you wind up electing a politician.
-Burt
Prelutsky
Florida's number three industry, behind tourism and skin cancer, is
voter fraud.
-Dave Barry
Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American
people will vote for the less bald of the two.
-Vic Gold
Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a
Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.
-Harry
S. Truman
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good.
-H.L. Mencken
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
I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its
fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you
may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.
-P.D. James
I didn't vote for change, but that's all I have left.
-Unattributed
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior
men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do
not run.
-Alexis de Tocqueville
I have never had a vote, and I have raised hell all over this country.
You don't need a vote to raise hell! You need convictions and a voice!
-Mary
Harris Jones (Mother Jones)
I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate
and there are only going to be 57 Senators there and they'll all die
because they won't have the 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the
building.
-Barney Frank
I hope some of the men who get the most votes will be elected.
-Will
Rogers
I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should
vote for is myself.
-Jack Nicholson
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for
Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But
sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.
-Pauline Kael
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 think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all,
we've been voting for boobs long enough.
-Claire Sargent
I vote for the same reason that I would punch a bear that was eating me.
I don't think it will make a big difference in the outcome, but at least
it doesn't look like I want to be eaten by a bear.
-Nick Doody
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'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.
-Ken
Kesey
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
If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their
will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained-
then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of
the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be
challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people.
-Walter
Lippmann
If God had wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.
-Jay
Leno
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 the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates
(book title)
-Jim Hightower
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
-Emma Goldman
If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree
with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.
-Ed Koch
If you don't vote, then you may be leaving the decisions up to someone
dumber than you.
-Jesse Ventura
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
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 any relatively close election you can generally credit almost any
subgroup as providing the marginal votes.
-Duncan Black
In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count
that votes.
-Mogens Jallberg
In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a
duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.
-Dick Gregory
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 really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate
mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes... it
strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a
national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent
blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good
or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.
-Walter Lippmann
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
It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
-Unattributed
It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it
is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is
against you.
-John Jay Chapman
It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as
votive offering and pagan ornament.
-Lewis H. Lapham
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 not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
-Tom
Stoppard
Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are
elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.
-Earl
Warren
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
More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few
even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few
have told them how to vote.
-Charles Bukowski
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
No politician is perfect. But in every election in your life, there will
be one choice that is better than the others. Go out and vote for that
one.
-Bill Maher
Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a
winning candidate.
-Mark B. Cohen
One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free
press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may
not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
-Hugo
Black
Our only hope is to control the vote.
-Medgar Evers
People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man
does not vote for anything but against something.
-H.H. Munro Saki
Politics is how you live your life, not whom you vote for.
-Jerry
Rubin
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
President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to
wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of
the American voters to become president, either.
-David Letterman
Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes
normal- a sort of voting situation. But once the threshold is reached,
then everyone demands to do whatever it is.
-Alan Kay
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
Television is the most perfect democracy. You sit there with your remote
control and vote.
-Aaron Brown
Texas has a lot of electrical votes.
-Yogi Berra
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with
the average voter.
-Winston Churchill
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a
democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you
don't have to waste your time voting.
-Charles Bukowski
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 effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular
moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the
thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
-Walter
Lippmann
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to
do something stupid.
-Art Spander
The laws and the entire scheme of our civil rule, from the town meeting
to the State capitals and the national capital, is yours. Your every
voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction,
though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust.
-Grover
Cleveland
The next time they give you all that civic bullsh*t about voting, keep
in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election.
-George
Carlin
The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.
-Paul
Wellstone
The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which
other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man
to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of
another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives
is in this case.
-Thomas Paine
The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true
emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in
woman's soul.
-Emma Goldman
The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.
-Dick
Gregory
The votes elected officials make should be based on the best interests
of the American people, not the fear of retribution when shadowy groups
spend millions of dollars on negative advertisements.
-Bernie
Sanders
The world would be a better place if people stopped voting for folksy
candidates they could have a beer with and started voting for people
smarter than they are.
-Marcus Sakey
There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still
bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the
central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that
they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the
whole of created things.
-W. Somerset Maugham
There are no moderate Republicans left, with the exception of a few who
would vote with us when it doesn't make any difference. It's the most
rigid ideological party since before the Civil War.
-Barney Frank
There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek
incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring
about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
-William
James
There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution
is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong- deadly wrong- to deny
any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is
no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the
struggle for human rights.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever
purify politics.
-Emma Goldman
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
To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply
observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
-Louis
L'Amour
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 not determined by majority vote.
-Doug Gwyn
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, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool
of himself and a wreck of his country.
-Ambrose Bierce
Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
-George
F. Will
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make
fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both
are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals
who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the
weather gets.
-Russell Baker
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 are going to lose 51 states. Puerto Rico will demand statehood just
for the chance not to vote for this guy.
-James Lileks
We live in a country where voting rights get gutted but Sharknado gets a
sequel.
-John Fugelsang
We need to be asking for the vote in the most powerful way possible,
which is to have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look
like and sound like the people that we're asking for the vote from.
-Karl
Rove
We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate.
-Frank
McKinney (Kin) Hubbard
What's real in politics is what the voters decide is real.
-Ben J.
Wattenberg
When a party can't think of anything else they always fall back on lower
taxes. It has a magic sound to a voter just like Fairyland is spoken of
and dreamed of by children. But no child has ever seen it. Neither has
any voter ever lived to see the day when his taxes were lowered.
-Will
Rogers
When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean
themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they
mean everybody who is going to vote for them.
-Franklin P. Adams
When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and
despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out
of this frustration can come hope and action.
-Paul Wellstone
When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the
cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson-
American community vote.
-James Lileks
Whenever a fellow tells me he is bipartisan, I know he's going to vote
against me.
-Harry S. Truman
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular
vote... the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the
possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.
-Che
Guevara
Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for
lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending
projects that make tax cuts impossible?
-Barry M. Goldwater
Why do the people humiliate themselves by voting? I didn't vote because
I have dignity. If I had closed my nose and voted for one of them, I
would spit on my own face.
-Oriana Fallaci
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 take your classified telephone directory, and open up 'Churches',
and have a ruler in your hand. And you will find that the longest space
is occupied by authoritarian, Bible-banging churches. And these people
are barbarians, who take the written word of the Bible literally.
Because they need terribly, they have a personal need, for something to
depend on.... The government realizes that there is a very large number
of people like that; and therefore, to keep their votes, they have to
pander to those kind of people. And these are the boys who never grew
up; they always need Papa.... The trouble is that the boys who need
Papa, are violent. They have the guns. And they are the types of people
who like to be soldiers, policemen- tough guys. And therefore they have
a great deal of power.
-Alan Watts
You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for,
or whether you vote at all.
-Stephen Vizinczey
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
-----
(November 3 is also the birthday of James
Reston and Roseanne
Barr.)
Categories:
Elections,
Quotes of the day,
Quotes on a topic,
Voting
Home
KGB Stuff
Commentwear
E-Mail KGB
Donate via PayPal
Older entries, Archives and Categories
Top of page
