Quotes about Elections

Despots can hide behind the word democracy, they can hide behind rigged elections, but they can't hide behind the actions they take that limit liberty. It's all about the liberty thing...not the democracy thing. If liberty is being devalued, limited, decreased or otherwise compromised then we have to scrutinize the leadership for what they are doing. Bottom line, those who limit liberty are no friends to freedom.

Opening and closing of Chapter 9 Tennis On The Titanic

During the Gore/Bush/Nader presidential election, while the entire nation was hypnotized by the spectacle, I had a vidsion.  I saw the Titanic churning through the waters of the North Atlantic toward an iceberg looming in the distance, while the passengers and crew concentrated on a tennis game taking place on deck.

In our election-obsessed culture, everything else going on in the world - war, hunger, official brutality, sickness, the violence of everyday life for huge numbers of people - is swept out of the way while the media covers every volley of the candidates.  Thus, the superficial crowds out the meaningful, and this is very useful for those who do not want citizens to look beyond the surface of the system.  Hidden by the contest of the candidates are the real issues of race, class, war, and peace, which the public is not supposed to think about.
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The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in recent elections conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals.  The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments - destroying welfare, imposing more punitive sentences on criminals, increasing Pentagon spending - were part of the Republican agenda.

The Demacrats and the Republicans do not dispute the continued corporate control of the economy.  Neither party endorses free national healthcare, proposes extensive low-cost housing, demands a minimum income for all Americans, or supports a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor.  Both support the death penalty and growth of prisons.  Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba.

Perhaps when, after the next election, the furor dies down over who really won the tennis match and we get over our anger at the referee's calls and the final, disputed score, we will finally break the hypnotic spell of the game and look around.  We may then think about whether the ship is slowly going down and whether there are enough lifeboats and what we should do about all that.

Those who vote decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.

In the end, ... that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

Politicians know it's not necessary to fool all the people all of the time - just during election campaigns.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

A message sent to all members of the American Sales Organization at the opening of the IBM Election Prize Contest, September 1, 1932. In every walk of life, the highest places and the greatest rewards go to those who have the courage to attempt and ability to achieve big things. That is true in science. It is true in government. It is true in business. And it is true in this organization. IBM leaders in the past have proved their worth by performance, just as they will in this sales campaign.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize. He became a member of the National Institute in 1935.

The Myth of the Angry White Male What has sprung up is a strange kind of thinking. . . . Americans are unhappy with their lot. They are feeling insecure - layoffs and corporate downsizing have made their future uncertain. Stirred up by talk radio, the theory goes, large numbers of formerly sensible people have embraced 'hate' and 'extremism.' Most of these, according to the media, are white guys. A Washington Post/ABC pre-election poll asked voters if they were angry 'about the way the federal government works.' Four out of five white males said no. 62 percent of white men voted for Republican House candidates (38 percent for Democrats in 1994, a ten-point increase from the 1990 midterm elections). But was this special to their gender? In 1994 white women voted for Republican House candidates by a 55 to 45 percent majority. Significantly, there isn't single article decrying 'angry white females.'

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.

We see no reason for thinking that the opinions of the magistrate on speculative questions are more likely to be right than those of any other man. None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbors. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbors together is still smaller.

A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman, of the next generation.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

I order you to hold a free election, but forbid you to elect anyone but Richard my clerk.

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

The worthy gentleman who has been snatched from us at the moment of the election, and in the middle of the contest, whilst his desires were as warm and his hopes as eager as ours, has feelingly told us what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue.

An election goes on every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which company and which product shall be the leader today and which shall lead tomorrow.

Describing life after the elections, 1997 Elizabeth's back at the red cross, and I'm walking the dog.

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

Our elections are free - it's in the results where eventually we pay.

July does not a November election make.

RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.

LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his election".

I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready. This comment was made in a private conversation with Newton Bateman, superintendent of public instruction for the state of Illinois, a few days before the election of 1860. During the election of 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy used the same words in a speech to the United Steelworkers of America convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 19, 1960. - Freedom of Communications, final report of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, part 1, p. 286 (1961). Senate Report. 87-994. As president, he used a variation of these words at the 10th annual presidential prayer breakfast, March 1, 1962. - Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F Kennedy, 1962, p. 176.

He said that he felt "like the boy that stumped his toe,-'it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.'" Attributed to Abraham Lincoln by John T. Morse, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, p. 149 (1893), referring to Lincoln's defeat by Senator Stephen Douglas in the 1858 senatorial campaign in Illinois. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 22, 1862, p. 131, attributed this reply to President Lincoln, when asked how he felt about the result of the New York election (where the Democratic candidate won the governorship]: "Somewhat like that boy in Kentucky, who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh." Adlai Stevenson told this story in his nationally-televised concession speech after the 1952 presidential election: "Someone asked me, as I came in, down on the street, how I felt, and I was reminded of a story that a fellow-townsman of ours used to tell-Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh."-The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson, ed. Walter Johnson, vol. 4, p. 188 (1974). The speech was delivered at the Leland Hotel Springfield, Illinois, in the early hours of November 5, 1952.