Constituency Quotes & Sayings

I'm the leader of the SNP. I think you would expect me to say I would vote SNP in whatever constituency I lived in. — Nicola Sturgeon

For me, living in the closet corroded my ability to have an honest, open relationship with my God, my loved ones, my constituency and myself. — James McGreevey

The President has not created any Ford constituency, unique from that of any Republican President. The one exception to this is that he does show unique strength with young voters for a Republican. — Robert Teeter

Eyes is the attempt to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement and to create an emotional, intellectual constituency. But what do you do after that? The black community doesn't have institutions that pick up such moments and preserve them. — Henry Hampton

When I was travelling in Rajasthan people were waving hands, and it felt like I was visiting my own constituency. — Kamla Persad-Bissessar

I had never run a campaign, but I was an organizer. My job was to create momentum by mobilizing the constituency we had, which I was positioned to do. — Junius Williams

They're still a subject beholden to special interests, but at least they have a national constituency. At least they have to think about national majorities. — Mark Shields

Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective — Wole Soyinka

Oftentimes, the way it seems to be is that our artists in particular point themselves out as spokesmen for a certain constituency in a community, and thereby place themselves in that vulnerable position. — Gil Scott-Heron

Every Democrat constituency group has at least two things in common. They hate us. They despise opposition. That's why they created political correctness. Speech censorship. They hate opposition and they'll do anything they can to eliminate it. — Rush Limbaugh

When I was deputy chairman I could travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh without leaving Tory land. In a two-week period I covered every constituency in which we had an MP. There were 14. Now we have only one. We appear to have given up. — Jeffrey Archer

Real estate sales was perfect training for the experience to go into public life because you learn to accept rejection, learn to meet new people, learn to work with people and find common ground. That's the way you sell houses ... that's also the way you win over constituency. — Johnny Isakson

The Republican Party looks at massive immigration, legal and illegal, as a source of cheap labor, satisfying a very important constituency. — Tom Tancredo

Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich. — P. J. O'Rourke

The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times. — Bertrand Russell

We also know that the various faith-based institutions provide about 50 per cent of the health and education services in the poor communities; we also know that they have a large constituency including women and youth; they have outreach and networks and they are credible to their people. If we want to achieve the Millennium Development Foals by scaling up the responses of all the communities, do we ignore this large investment in people? Or do we engage in dialogue and in action? — Thoraya Obaid

Alignment begins with a constituency of one. These are the individuals whose substance is real, pure and nonnegotiable. They share their vulnerabilities and fears in complement to their strengths. They are comfortable weaving all parts of their lives together in an integrated way. Our level of effectiveness, contribution and integrity of work and life are in direct correlation with our level of integration, self-actualization and total alignment fo body, mind and spirit. — Kristin S. Kaufman

The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't. — Mark McKinnon

In my own constituency, the benefit cap has had the effect of social cleansing: of people receiving benefit, but the benefit is capped; therefore, they can't meet the rent levels charged and are forced to move. It's devastating for children, devastating for the family and very bad for the community as a whole. — Jeremy Corbyn

Our constituency aren't the type of people to be on the Internet. — Jesse Helms

You can be president of the United States and have the best, most bipartisan-seeming idea in the world. But if it doesn't have a constituency, you might as well be town clerk of Toad Suck, Arkansas. — Timothy Noah

Deal with the Devil if the Devil has a constituency - and don't complain about the heat. — C.J. Cherryh

I feel much more strongly about the abdication of responsibility by the media than by political advocates. They're representing a constituency. — Jon Stewart

Any time an elected official in the world we're in today that appears so dysfunctional challenges a core constituency not of their opponent but of their own political base, I think we should pause and give them credit. — Jeb Bush

Every line in the government's budget has its own constituency. — Walter Wriston

The largest untapped constituency in American politics are the 300 million American citizens who have been completely left out of the immigration debate. — Jeff Sessions

All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues. — Tony Judt

We lost everything. We even won our own constituency. — Maryon Pearson

Simply because one is Black or Latino or lesbian or gay or whatever does not guarantee the person's fidelity to a body of politics that empowers the particular constituency that they supposedly represent. The number of black elected officials has risen from 100 in 1964 to more than 9000 today. The number of African Americans who were in congress 30 years ago was about five; today it is over 40, an 800 percent increase. But have Blacks experienced an 800 percent increase in real power? It hasn't happened. So, I think the emphasis of this liberal notion of social change by working solely within the established electoral system is just fatally flawed. — Manning Marable

The south really wants Abyei; they have a core constituency who reside in the area who believe that Abyei belongs to the south. There are a number of those sons of Abyei in high positions of government in South Sudan, so it's pretty hard for South Sudan to just walk away. — Rebecca Hamilton

During the election people from visible minorities stood as candidates on both the left and the right. And only one African woman was elected in a very left-wing constituency in Paris. The French don't seem to be ready to elect people from a visible minority. So maybe this society is not ready to have a woman from a foreign background in this important post. That really surprised us, because we thought we had evolved. — Patrick Gaubert

I'm able to be very effective because I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican. So, I'm not tied, and I'd never want to be tied to anything, to some constituency that I would have to answer to. — Angelina Jolie

When you're a leader, you cannot ignore parts of your constituency, even if you know they're not going to vote for you. — Keith Ellison

There is clearly a constituency that appreciates the message that Google is sending, that it finds the Chinese government's attitude to the Internet and censorship unacceptable. — Rebecca MacKinnon

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing. — Nicholas Lemann

I had no inkling of how crazy the political life would turn out to be. You shuttle between your constituency and Ottawa, you try to make every barbecue, festival, parade and charity run, but sometimes you feel pulled in 14 directions at once. — Michael Ignatieff

There is some humor in Monsieur Lazhar and in all my other films, but this one I'll try to make a real comedy from start to finish. It's called Prescott Etc. because the name of the constituency is so long that everybody in the constituency just says Prescott Etc. I don't know if that's what it will be. It's a working title. — Philippe Falardeau

I don't have a constituency, and I'm not autobiographical in any way. I write these deeply moral books in a country which would prefer irony to anything with a moral tone. — Jim Crace

The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency. — Adolf Hitler

Change has no constituency. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The rhetoric and demands from all sides may be harsh, but there are obvious areas of agreement that can provide a basis for progress. Private discussions with Arab leaders are much more promising than their public statements would lead one to believe, and in Israel there is a strong and persistent constituency for moderation that is too little heard or appreciated in neighboring states or in America. — Jimmy Carter

People don't realize that the Obama Administration has been, if anything, harder on whistleblowers than the Bush Administration. Part of the reason is that they know that the response will be more muted because the traditional constituency supporting whistleblowers just happen to be the same constituency as Obama's. — Jonathan Turley

I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life. — Jack Nicholson

No politician is threatened by the child protective constituency, because it does not exist. — Andrew Vachss

I always tried to do what I believed is right and I've always voted the way that I believe was the right way for my constituency, and that's what I'm doing when I govern. — Jan Brewer

We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored, but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then. — Robert Webb

When you're building a company, you need to continually strengthen every component - finance, strategic partnerships, executive team, and relationships with every last constituency. — Michael J. Saylor

Hundreds of our old neighbors, friends, coworkers, and teachers are new insomniacs. They file for dream bankruptcy, appeal for Slumber Corps aid, wait to be approved for a sleep donor. It is a special kind of homelessness, says our mayor, to be evicted from your dreams. I believe our mayor is both genuinely concerned for his insomniac constituency, and also pandering to a powerfully desperate new voting block. — Karen Russell

Some of the structural drivers of inflation have also weakened. Trade unions have become less powerful. Loss-making state industries have been privatized. But, perhaps most importantly of all, the social constituency with an interest in positive real returns on bonds has grown. In the developed world a rising share of wealth is held in the form of private pension funds and other savings institutions that are required, or at least expected, to hold a high proportion of their assets in the form of government bonds and other fixed income securities. In 2007 a survey of pension funds in eleven major economies revealed that bonds accounted for more than a quarter of their assets, substantially lower than in past decades, but still a substantial share.71 With every passing year, the proportion of the population living off the income from such funds goes up, as the share of retirees increases. — Niall Ferguson

Obama's Marxist mentors - Franklin Marshall Davis, Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers - also understood that you don't build an army of street organizers or a recurring voting constituency by teaching people of the streets to fish. When you 'share wealth around' you make the distributees dependent on your next handout - beholden to your largesse with other's people's money and personally worse off in every respect. — David Limbaugh

I think there's a number of pillars to success. One is you've got to have a great idea. The other is you've got to have a constituency, you've got to have finance, and you've got to be able to raise awareness. — Jeremy Gilley

Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past. — James Russell Lowell

We will proceed with current land reform with or without sanctions, ... Let that position be known here and abroad and let the commercial farmers tell that to their constituency or constituencies overseas. — Robert Mugabe

If you were to describe me as teetotal, on behalf of my constituency I'd have to sue; that would lose me every vote in the Highlands. — Charles Kennedy

I was much more comfortable and a much better congressman running in a district that was 37 percent black, where I had to have a white constituency to get elected, than I would have been if I was in a 75 percent black district. — Andrew Young

Venice was always one step removed from what was going on. If you were in Turin or in Milan or one of the industrial centers, you would have had a much more active political constituency. Venice essentially lived for itself. — Joseph Kanon

Presently [Bridey] said: "If I was Rex" - his mind seemed full of such suppositions: "If I was Archbishop of Westminster," "If I was head of the Great Western Railway," "If I was an actress," as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted - "if I was Rex I should want to live in my constituency. — Evelyn Waugh

I will take a short time out from being in Parliament when the baby is born but I'll still be doing my constituency work - just with another baby in tow. — Lucy Powell

If you feel you have a strong constituency among the young, you can really die happy, because the great unanswered question, the only valid value judgment is whether you're going to last, and that tells you that you are, for a bit at least. — Martin Amis

In the Republican party, crazy is a constituency. — Bill Maher

Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don't get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new. — Nolan Bushnell

Create your own constituency of the infuriated. — William Safire

I think the editorial page of the Washington Post is the best in the country. I think the editorials - considering it's a liberal town, liberal constituency and from the liberal tradition - I think it's the best editorial page around. It's quite balanced. — Charles Krauthammer

With the greatest respect, we do not make the criminal law on the basis of opinion polls. A majority of 9:1 could be in favour of a ban in my constituency, but I would not regard that as conclusive, and I hope that we never would. If we start having opinion polls about all the unpleasant and distasteful habits and customs of some members of society, and suggesting that their findings should be made part of the criminal law, foxhunting would come way down the list, and quite a lot of strange enactments would have to go through the House. — Kenneth Clarke

For me it's more important to look at each constituency individually and find a community I feel I can serve to the best of my abilities, and where I feel I can make a real difference, and further their cause. — Adam Rickitt

We have two nations, and it's not black or white. It's red and blue. Under Republican leadership, cities tend to do better. Cities are destroyed under Democrats, because they don't know how to deal with the constituency; they're terrified. — Greg Gutfeld

I want to develop Katihar as an ideal district. That is my dream for my constituency. — Tariq Anwar

Nothing will motivate conservative evangelical Christians to vote Republican in the 2008 presidential election more than a Democratic nominee named Hillary Rodham Clinton - not even a run by the devil himself ... I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate. She has $300 million so far. But I hope she's the candidate. Because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't. — Jerry Falwell

The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency
indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman
but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan. — Ishmael Reed

People are free to campaign and they will be free to vote. There won't be any soldiers, you know, at the queues. Anyone who has the right to vote is free to go and cast his vote anywhere in his own area, in his own constituency. — Robert Mugabe

I think that I'm the same Jan Brewer I was when I first ran for office way back in 1982, which is a few years ago. I always tried to do what I believed is right and I've always voted the way that I believe was the right way for my constituency, and that's what I'm doing when I govern. So, I'm the same Jan Brewer. — Jan Brewer

You could say I'd rewritten the same novel three times and I thought I had to move on. The success of the book, and then the movie, had by then also created a commercial expectation and I remember touring America and seeing people in the audiences who I thought might not want to read the books I wanted to write next. My constituency had become broader, but more mysterious to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Politicians read the polls that show 85 or 90 percent of the voters profess a belief in God, so they identify themselves with religion, often only to the degree necessary to reach the constituency they are targeting. — Jack Germond

In Shahjahanpur, there was not much of a political fight. It was my family constituency and I knew all the voters and their problems and needs. — Jitin Prasada

But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history ... — Adam Nevill

Listening to the debates about public schools on the Christian Right, one hears plenty of opposing opinions and a great deal of confusion. Some want to change the schools, others want to leave them. But the smart money seems to know what it is doing. It provides support for programs like the Good News Club, which slowly erode the support for public education in the country at large and in their own constituency in particular. And then it lays the groundwork for dismantling public education in favor of a private system of religious education funded by the state. — Katherine Stewart

There is no power in the world like that of women ... this most potent constituency we seek to represent, and for their suffrages we sue. — Louisa Lawson

Obama's primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created. — Noam Chomsky

As long as greed, stupidity and cowardice remain a part of the human condition, there will be a constituency for Democrats. — Jack Kelly

I do not own a car, and my main form of travel to Westminster and in my constituency is by bicycle. I also take my bike on trains to meetings in other parts of the country, which enables me to see other cities and the other parts of the country. — Jeremy Corbyn

It is our duty to watch over the actions and activities of this government and to insist that, in words as well as in deeds, the interests of our constituency primarily and of the Nation ultimately are served. — Diane Watson

There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you." — Walter E. Williams

People may have their opinions about Senator Helms, but he was highly effective and he took care of his constituency. I learned all those lessons from him, and I bring a great deal to the table because of that. — David Rouzer

If a man were to spend years of his life trying to discover the chemical constituency of salt water without bothering to find out what has already been said on the subject in any elementary chemistry book, we should say that he was making very imperfect use of the resources available to us. Similarly, can it not be said that people, worrying themselves sick over their individual frustrations, constantly suffering from petty irritations and hypertensions, are making extremely imperfect use of the available human resources of adjustment when they fail to strengthen and quiet themselves through contact with literature, music, painting, and the other arts? — S.I. Hayakawa

I agree with Peter Drucker that the culture and legal systems of the United Statesare especially favorable to shareholder interests, compared to other interests and compared to most other countries. Indeed, there are many other countries where any good going to public shareholders has a very low priority and almost every other constituency stands higher in line. — Charlie Munger

I hate to lose the constituency that I've worked with, but I've got 170,000 people to meet in my new district. — Albert Wynn

He or she must be successful in economic terms, but always within an ethical framework. Whether his or her constituency is a corporation and its shareholders or the customers in a small and privately held business, his or her first responsibility is to serve that constituency. — Lee R. Raymond

For example, Shawn Cole, a professor at Harvard Business School, finds that Indian state-owned banks increase their lending to the politically important but relatively poor constituency of farmers by about 5 to 10 percentage points in election years.51 The effect is most pronounced in districts with close elections. The consequences of the lending are greater loan defaults and no measurable increase in agricultural output, which suggest that it really serves as a costly form of income redistribution. — Raghuram G. Rajan

Bush invited his constituency to be blind to the world's real problems, and leftists often do the opposite, gazing so fixedly at those problems that they cannot see beyond them. Thus it is that the world often seems divided between false hope and gratuitous despair. Despair demands less of us, it's more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity--seeing the troubles in this world--and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable. — Rebecca Solnit

I know from my constituency what is going on. Doctors that are told, begged, by mothers, 'Please don't write down that my child as asthma. Please lie and say it's bronchitis, because if you write down asthma, when my child turns 18 or 20 and has to get his or her own insurance, it will be a pre-existing condition.' — Barbara Boxer

The Democratic Party has taken the black community for granted and said, 'This is the most loyal constituency we have. They're not going anywhere.' But the Republican Party has said, 'That's the most loyal constituency Democrats have. They're not going anywhere. We've got to win without them.' — J. C. Watts

People in my constituency are starving and born with sixteen fingers. Did you ever eat weasel shish-kebob? Freddy doesn't walk by the side of the motorways to gather dandelions for his salad, but the people who sent me here do. Why are we supporting him? He doesn't deserve it. The Tories won't give milk to children who go to school hungry and come home to baked cat. — Mark Helprin

Free speech has a very small constituency on the modern campus, particularly if the speaker under attack is conservative. — John Leo

The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for 'charity' to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity. — Grover Norquist

The story of how shit got in our meat is the story of one of the central characteristics of carnism, and of other violent ideologies: the system depends on a constituency of indirect victims, inadvertent victims who not only suffer the consequences of the system, but who also help that system by unwittingly participating in their own victimization. The system creates such victims by appearing to be something it is not, so that we feel safe when we are at risk and free when we have been coerced. The story of how shit got in our meat is the story of the human casualties of carnism. — Melanie Joy

I have no great urge to be minister of this or minister of that, but instead would feel incredible blessed to have the opportunity to be a champion for a constituency and fight for their cause. — Adam Rickitt

Young Republicans are a very, very important constituency. Along with little old ladies, they provide the foot soldiers for the Republican Party. — Roger Stone

Look, I am a Palestinian elected representative from Jericho. If a Palestinian wants to sell his fruit anywhere in the West Bank, he goes to the Israeli civil administration. If a Palestinian sick person wants to leave a hospital, he goes through the Israeli civil administration. Nobody can leave or enter my constituency without Israeli permission. Israel is, in effect, resuming the occupation. — Saeb Erekat

Society, because it is composed of living humans, is organic and if healthy, supple. It is like a rubber band. As long as the groups that compose society are flexible and social and emotionally supporting, it serves its constituency well. It bends, weaves, twists, turns, and envelops everyone in diverse manners. If opposing forces become too locked into their polarized viewpoints, though, other things happen.

Like two grumpy siblings, they hold their views with anger or self-righteousness and utter vulgar and crass words, but it amounts to the same thing. The two groups pull on the rubber band and rigidly hold to their position without empathy.

The rubber band (society) grows taut and then eventually it snaps and collateral damage ensues and the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bath water. — Leviak B. Kelly

This power became addicting to many elected officials who, instead of going to Washington, DC, for a brief time to represent their constituency, wanted to hold their positions for extended periods of time - even for life. This growing power and the progressive intrusion of government into the lives of the people was so insidious that it went largely undetected. — Ben Carson