Campaigning Quotes & Sayings

In an age when stagecraft, gauzy themes, and sound-bites have too often been substituted for leadership, Bill Clinton as a candidate made it essential to campaigning to take the specifics of governance seriously. Practical solutions were 'in;' ideology was 'out.' — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

I'm concerned about the negative aspect of political campaigning in american nation, which is a new phenomenon. When I ran for president against Gerald Ford and later against Ronald Reagan we never referred to each other except as 'my distinguished opponent'. And had we criticised personally our opponent it would have been political suicide, we would have been castigated and condemned for it. — Jimmy Carter

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. — Audre Lorde

I heard you're campaigning on my behalf." He walked over to me. "That wouldn't be because you'd miss me too much if I were gone,would it?"
"Don't be absurd," I scoffed. "I don't condone murder, even for people like you."
"People like me,huh?" He cocked an eyebrow. "You mean devilishly handsome, debonair young men who come to sweep rebellious princesses of their feet?"
"You came to kidnap me, not sweep me off my feet," I said,but he waved his hand at the idea.
"Semantics. — Amanda Hocking

I have become an adjective. There is something called a Rovian-style of campaigning and it's meant as an insult. One columnist said it consists mainly of throwing mud until it sticks. One prominent blogger described the elements of a textbook Rovian race as fear-based, smear-based and anything goes. — Karl Rove

I'd like the campaigning to be about all the things they're not going to do. Just tell me what you're not going do! Don't tell me what you're going to do. Just say "I'd really like to do solar energy but I'm not going to be able to. I really want to dig holes everywhere in the country but I really won't be able to do it because people seem to think that maybe my water will be screwed up." — Lewis Black

I traveled the state of Florida for two years campaigning. I have never met a job creator who told me that they were waiting for the next tax increase before they started growing their business. I've never met a single job creator who's ever said to me I can't wait until government raises taxes again so I can go out and create a job. — Marco Rubio

As we flew through the air, Aries shrieked. If we all survive, he's never living that down. Behind us, Madman was laughing like this was the funniest thing in the world, and Sir Mix-a-Lot was still aggressively campaigning the perks of big booties. We — Laura Thalassa

Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of campaigning with movie stars or sailing with the Kennedys, but the real thing. The candidate himself is glamorous. Audiences project onto him the personal qualities and political positions they want in a president. — Virginia Postrel

This trip was not about running for president. This trip was preparing to BE president. — Rick Perlstein

In the ever accelerating world of the Internet, e-campaigning has gone from a novelty to a necessity in less than a year. With increasing sophistication and urgency, campaigns are using the Web as a bulletin board, advertising medium and organizing tool. — Howard Fineman

I am not one to generalize, but cartoonists, as a group, exhibit a level of social sophistication generally associated with pie fights. In high school, when the future lawyers were campaigning for class president, the future cartoonists were painstakingly altering illustrations in their history books so that Robert E. Lee appeared to be performing an illegal act with his horse. — Dave Barry

In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud...
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.
-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157. — Ramachandra Guha

Gray Davis got some good news this week: the Clintons are out here in California campaigning for him. Actually, Hillary is campaigning for Davis, Bill is out here for Larry Flynt. — Jay Leno

I went on the road with Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was out campaigning. — Casey Wilson

I would not want to be a politician ... Let me tell you this: If I was campaigning, and I go against my opponent and he started attacking my character, and I leap over the table and choke him unconscious, would that help my campaign? — Chuck Norris

I am actively campaigning for 'chest hair' to become an Olympic sport. — Chris Carmack

I don't like to see a president who is just out campaigning all year long or for the last four years. I'd like to see somebody who's going in the office. In fact, I'd like to not see them because that way you'd be sure that they'd be working. — Clint Eastwood

Newt Gingrich was campaigning at a zoo this week and he was bitten by a penguin. Newt Gingrich is always campaigning at zoos. Mitt Romney once did a photo op at a zoo. That was a big mistake, because he stood next to the chameleon, and HE changed colors. — Bill Maher

And how about that Barack Obama? You know what they're saying? For the first time he's starting to slip in the polls. Barack Obama is starting to slip in the polls. Don't worry. He's got a plan. He's going to be to campaigning in Europe. — David Letterman

Instead, we talked about the reasons to support political leaders who support us, never mind party labels. It was the kind of campaigning only a movement could do. — Gloria Steinem

The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty. — Paul Johnson

If I'm sure of a person and his potential in politics, and if I know he will live up to his promises, I wouldn't mind campaigning for him. I believe in the dictum, 'never say never.' You never know, I might end up joining politics. — Arjun Rampal

Drag for me is costume, and what I'm trying to do is, sometimes I'll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It's the inverse of drag. It's not about artifice. It's about me just expressing myself. So when I'm campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It's just what I have on, like any woman. — Eddie Izzard

When I was campaigning, I told the people if nothing happens under my mandate it will still be a positive thing because my mandate will be used as a rupture between the past and the future. — Michel Martelly

Whether it's running for president or trying to win an Oscar, campaigning is a must and relationships are a big part of that. It's about who you know to rally behind you. — Ryan Kavanaugh

I was sorry to see the News of the World go down, I think it was a great campaigning newspaper. Who can forget the News of the World's high profile campaign against child sex offenders which led to News of the World readers burning down the home of a paediatrician, throwing rocks at a pedalo, stamping on a centipede. — Stewart Lee

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was right when he claimed, 'In politics, what begins in fear usually ends up in folly.' Political activists are more inclined, though, to heed an observation from Richard Nixon: 'People react to fear, not love. They don't teach that in Sunday school, but it's true.' That principle, which guided the late president's political strategy throughout his career, is the sine qua non of contemporary political campaigning. Marketers of products and services ranging from car alarms to TV news programs have taken it to heart as well.

The short answer to why Americans harbor so many misbegotten fears is that immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes. — Barry Glassner

I would not ask anyone to vote for me based on my last name. I am certainly not campaigning to be president because my last name is Clinton. — Bernie Sanders

Part of the reason I am so evangelical in our campaigning work is that I had an unshakeable faith in Labour values, but we needed a machine worthy of the message. I grew up with a peerless Conservative machine, with vastly superior resources. — Douglas Alexander

I've been campaigning for 17 of the last 24 months. I'm ready to legislate and not campaign. — John Y. Campbell

When you say politics, you conjure a whole bunch of associations: elections, campaigning, debates, fundraising. None of this exists in Russia! We are still fighting not for election victories but for having elections at all. — Garry Kasparov

Harvey Weinstein bought our film, and he's an animal. He's got us out there campaigning and everything because honestly it's a silent black-and-white film. — Penelope Ann Miller

I read a newspaper article in May 1984 which predicted that syringes would one day be a major cause of the transmission of HIV. It was what I had been waiting for - a project that had a lot of the things that I liked: problem-solving, product design, campaigning, and being a bit of a big mouth pain-in-the-bum. — Marc Koska

And a recent study revealed that American politicos spend more on Uber than on regular taxis when campaigning, a strong indication that the road ahead is likely to remain clear. — Anonymous

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support. — Tony Benn

Mum and Dad met campaigning on the Spanish civil war. Both were active peace campaigners. They died in 1986 and '87. — Jeremy Corbyn

You really hope that people who want to be politically active aren't so disillusioned at this point. I do feel positive about what's happening. I think that with all of these movements, and this growing collective voice that's emerging, people are starting to come out of the kind of dazed state that they were in for so many years. But it's tough to know the best way to effect change now. Campaigning alone no longer seems to be the answer. — Scarlett Johansson

Rather than campaigning to help women, feminists today are more likely to be picking fights on Twitter, or dressing up petty grievances as proof of rampant 'sexism'. — Angela Epstein

Halloween is a day when we all get to fool people into thinking we're someone else. Or as Mitt Romney calls it, campaigning. — Bill Maher

And I have been campaigning for the past three months trying to get the Senate Judiciary Committee that has the oversight authority and responsibility to start its own public hearings. — Sibel Edmonds

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them — Adlai E. Stevenson II

Now I am dedicating that life to campaigning against the death penalty and raising awareness about human rights. — Hafez Ibrahim

I loved campaigning. — Elizabeth Edwards

Solutions-oriented campaigning with a little passion and a little humor; I think that will go a long way. I think people are desperate for it. — Laura Ingraham

I don't necessarily admire whom and what you choose to read and the gullibility with which you take at face value rationalist blasphemies spouted by an immoralist of the ilk of Bertrand Russell, four times married, a blatant adulterer, an advocate of free love, a self-confessed socialist dismissed from his university position for his antiwar campaigning during the First War and imprisoned for that by the British authorities. — Philip Roth

Anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office. — David Broder

A lot of campaigning for food purity is a translated worry about abundance. You still eat your fill, but you agonize over the food's contents. We are a pack of animals that allows some to have excess food while others starve. Those who have so much get finicky about what is good to eat; they become obsessed by it, re-creating scarcity for themselves so as to not feel guilty, confused, or dangerously envied. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Perhaps the most important reason to be skeptical of government inflation numbers is that the government, like a fox campaigning to guard a hen house, has many reasons to be disingenuous. As the world's largest debtor, the Federal Government is inflation's primary beneficiary. — Peter Schiff

While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers. — Gore Vidal

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. — Mario Cuomo

The truth is, 'Charlie Hebdo' is not a racist magazine. Rather, it is a campaigning anti-racist left-wing magazine. — Maajid Nawaz

Family law is institutionally anti-male. I've been lobbying MPs, and I'm not going to give up campaigning for equality until I get equality. — Louis De Bernieres

People who keep dogs live longer on average than those who do not. This is not some kind of pro-canine campaigning fantasy. It is a simple medical fact that the calming influence of the company of a friendly pet animal reduces blood pressure and therefore
the risk of heart attack. — Desmond Morris

And Ralph Nader, God bless him, still out there campaigning. Ralph Nader said today he has set a record for the most campaign speeches given in one day. He gave 21 speeches in one day. Of course, we have to take his word for it, because of course, there are no witnesses. — Jay Leno

I probably enjoy campaigning more than most other people in public office because I like people and I enjoy going out there and telling people what I've done. — Ed Koch

I believe I can lead this party from the front as a campaigning organization. — Nigel Farage

I think most people would be surprised at the length of the day whilst you're campaigning and then the variety of things that you do and you're asked to do. — Eric Abetz

You're really earning the support of New Hampshire voters, and you've got to do that one-on-one grassroots campaigning here, even if you have the most money. — Kelly Ayotte

Christians should emphatically be campaigning for justice for the poor - but the Church is not a campaign. — Rowan Williams

Baseball is our national pastime, that is if you discount political campaigning. — Ronald Reagan

Only in Washington would the Republican operatives get the entire press corps ginned up over the notion that I'm going to be home campaigning instead of going to a bunch of worthless parties at a convention that's only being held to do something we all know is going to happen anyway. — Claire McCaskill

But he's looking for love in all the wrong places. Like fancy under catalogs
At least he knows enough not to date while he's campaigning — Meg Cabot

People would ask me how I could stand the long campaigning, how I could stand being charged with the responsibilities of a great nation, one of the most powerful and difficult jobs in the world.
It wasn't any more difficult than picking cotton all day or shaking peanuts. — Jimmy Carter

My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all. — Cindy McCain

I should be campaigning for his release in print in a way that appeared crusading but actually wasn't quite effective enough to work. Like planting barely noticeable seeds of doubt into the prose. Subtle. I — Jon Ronson

So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in marketing. — Mark Forsyth

Conservatives and companies condoned Rush Limbaugh's 2006 attacks on Michael J. Fox for campaigning about stem cell research. — Christine Pelosi

When I turned 18, was the first time that I really started concentrating on politics. And I started doing so because I realized that in order to really create and generate change, it has to come from changing laws ... so I started campaigning for Norman Lear's foundation, which was Declare Yourself. — Hayden Panettiere

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer. — Robert Dallek

If you're campaigning against ObamaCare, but you're also having to defend yourself for closing the government, that seems to take away the asset from you. — Ted Cruz

If raising money is critical to getting reelected, so is spending taxpayers' money to reward those who help get us reelected. — Congressman X

Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes. — Zac Goldsmith

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil. — C.S. Lewis

For Jack Kennedy, who only made campaigning LOOK easy, it was, in fact, anything but. — David Pietrusza

I think sometimes negative campaigning, like so much, is in the eye of the beholder, and I don't think we'll ever get rid of it. — Peter Jennings

Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union. — Robert Dallek

When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. — Barack Obama

The point of the resurrection ... is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die ... What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it ... What you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it ... ). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom. — N. T. Wright

Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people's tuition for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me. — Jesse Ventura

For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses. — Anita Roddick

Few developments in campaigning have been as vilified and misunderstood as independent expenditure PACs, or, as they are colloquially known, super PACs. — Bradley A. Smith

The American people deserve truthfulness, not more political campaigning. The American people deserve a responsible government that seeks to address their needs, not more ideological dogma. — Jose Serrano

There's all this talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, you know where he is now? Visiting Mexico, which I think means that he is definitely going to run for governor. Arnold is smart. He's in Mexico campaigning with the very people who'll be living here by election time. — Jay Leno

The cost of campaigning has skyrocketed in recent years because of the falloff in TV viewership. With only one-third as many people watching TV as did 20 years ago, politicians have responded by buying three times as many ads, driving the cost of campaigning to levels which only favored candidates can afford. — Dick Morris

We love the blather and boast, the charge and counter-charge of campaigning. Governing is a tougher deal. — Hugh Sidey

I really will never understand pushing back on comedians who are like, "I'm like a politician campaigning and shaking hands with these people. They're going to be okay." — Jen Kirkman

As Donald Trump was campaigning for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 he was asked, "Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?" He replied, "I'm not sure I have. I just go and try and do a better job from there. . . . If I do something wrong, I think I just try to make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't."1 He created quite a stir among many religious people, so he tempered the comments a few days later. But I think he was being honest, and his comments reflect the way many people feel: in theory they believe in the forgiveness of sins, but the concept doesn't really apply to them. Standing in stark contrast to this view is one articulated by twentieth-century existentialist theologian Paul Tillich, who once said, "Forgiveness is an answer, the divine answer, to the question implied in our existence."2 — Adam Hamilton

Thus, if there is anyone who is confident that he can advise me as to the best advantage of the state in this campaign which I am about to conduct, let him not refuse his services to the state, but come with me into Macedonia. I will furnish him with his sea-passage, with a horse, a tent, and even travel-funds. If anyone is reluctant to do this and prefers the leisure of the city to the hardships of campaigning, let him not steer the ship from on shore. — Livy

I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much. — Sammy Davis Jr.

I've noticed that in the U.S., when the president hits the three-year mark in office, he goes into re-election campaigning. — Lee Myung-bak

I feel like I am campaigning door to door. You just can't step out of a band like Brooks & Dunn and assume that it is just going to be business as usual. You have to work it. It does feel like a campaign where you would have Obama, Romney, or Newt beating the bushes right now. That's what I'm having to do. — Ronnie Dunn

When campaigning, be swift as the wind; in leisurely march, majestic as the forest; in raiding and plundering, like fire; in standing, firm as the mountains. As unfathomable as the clouds, move like a thunderbolt. — Sun Tzu

I can see how your mother would have a point. Having a debate with a politically minded woman can be intriguing and even entertaining but to share a house with her and have her always campaigning and protesting at the dinner table," he slanted his gaze down toward me. "That could be very tiring indeed. — Gwenn Wright

I really am glad that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has had the courage to stand up and say that children should not be hit under any circumstances. I am a committed supporter of this campaigning charity for children. — Jerry Hall

All my years campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. Still, I realize this fully only by looking back. — Gloria Steinem

George W. Bush is very vulnerable but not if you campaign the way the major candidates - except for Dean and Kucinich - are campaigning. — Ralph Nader

There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost. — Desmond Tutu

All my years of campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To — Gloria Steinem

Biologists have determined brookies to be indicators of ecosystem health and have been recently campaigning to get the word out. If brookies inhabit a stream, the odds are good that the waterway is in excellent condition. — Joseph Monninger