Quotes & Sayings About Election Campaigns

It isn't a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think it's quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the world's superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy. — Arundhati Roy

We calculate the amount spent [by Brethren and other anti- Green groups] was between $500,000 and $1 million - that's a huge amount for a state election campaign in Tasmania. — Bob Brown

During an election campaign the air is full of speeches and vice versa. — Henry Adams

These are party-sanctioned debates. This is a presidential election, you show up at the debates. These are the rules. We have a series of unwritten rules of how campaigns are run, and everybody has followed those rules consistently over the decades. And no one has really even seriously thought about breaking them. — Ryan Grim

The Supreme Court dealt a huge blow, overturning a 100-year-old precedent that basically corporations couldn't give directly to political campaigns. And everyone is up in arms because they don't like it. The Federal Election Commission can't do anything about it. — Lois Lerner

political environment. But there is always a thin line between a peaceful election and armed conflict. We acknowledge this close relationship in the way we use martial jargon to discuss our politics. Candidates battle for states, campaigns are run from war rooms, commercials are part of a media blitz, and campaign volunteers are foot soldiers. "Politics," the Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz said, "is the womb in which war develops." Violent conflict is born out in other nations where the martial language of politics is not metaphorical. In the same year that McCain and Obama — Scott Farris

For all its considerable merits and inspirational principles, the American system is based upon a continuous uninterrupted process of election campaigns, stretching out year after year. Lost in the perpetual scramble is any long-term vision ... — Queen Noor Of Jordan

Lyndon Johnson. The junior congressman saw two things that no one else saw. The first was a possible connection between two groups that had previously had no link: conservative Texas oilmen and contractors - most notably his financial backer, Herman Brown, of Brown & Root - who needed federal contracts and tax breaks and were willing to spend money, a lot of money, to get them; and the scores of northern, liberal congressmen, running for re-election, who needed money for their campaigns. The second was that he could become that link. — Robert A. Caro

If I take donations from Big Corporates to fund our election campaign, I'll be accountable to them and would have to do what they tell me to do after winning elections. But if I take donations from common people to fund our Election Campaign, after winning, I'll be accountable to them — Arvind Kejriwal

Thank heaven Election Day is over. No more campaign ads, no more mud-slinging, no more candidates pretending they're straight. It's over! — Craig Ferguson

Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

A recent analysis of election coverage by the Tindall report which tracks network nicely news programs found that Bernie Sanders received just ten minutes out of 857 minutes of campaign coverage in 2015. Compare that to 234 minutes for Donald Trump, and 113 for Hillary Clinton. — Melissa Harris-Perry

Grassroots organizing tends to be most available to big campaigns, but it's actually most useful to small ones. You can't win a presidential campaign without going on TV, but you can win a local election simply by organizing your community. NationBuilder levels the playing field. — Joe Green

As our values are the core to who we are as human beings, they are also the easiest way to identify and connect with others in meaningful ways. Think about it - most political campaigns are based around values. Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign galvanized millions of youth behind two very clear values - hope and change. — Adam Braun

Remember, at the end of the day [election] campaigns are always about the candidates. — Chris Christie

Our campaigns have not grown more humanistic because our candidates are more benevolent or their policy concerns more salient. In fact, over the last decade, public confidence in institutions-- big business, the church, media, government-- has declined dramatically. The political conversation has privileged the nasty and trivial. Yet during that period, election seasons have awakened with a new culture of volunteer activity. This cannot be credited to a politics inspiring people to hand over their time but rather to campaign, newly alert to the irreplaceable value of a human touch, seeking it out. Finally campaigns are learning to quantify the ineffable - the value of a neighbor's knock, of a stranger's call, the delicate condition of being undecided-- and isolate the moment where a behavior can be changed, or a heart won. Campaigns have started treating voters like people again. — Sasha Issenberg

Earlier today, John McCain was in the news. John McCain gave his first press conference since the election. And he said, 'For a lot of people, Sarah Palin was an energizing factor during the campaign.' Unfortunately for McCain, those people are called Democrats. — Conan O'Brien

As dismayed as Americans are with the influence of the special interests that finance election campaigns, they've been reluctant to embrace the alternative: taxpayer-financed elections. — John Harwood

you're worried about Congress being manipulated by money, the United States House of Representatives started filing their campaign contributions electronically a decade ago, yet the United States Senate refuses to do so. Year after year a bill is proposed, and one way or another it ends up suffocating and dying by the end of the session. This results in a half-million dollar expense to the taxpayer as the Federal Election Commission takes nearly three months to type in, from the various campaigns' paper reports, every campaign contribution that every Senate campaign receives. And as a result, we cannot see how a member of the United States Senate is being influenced by money until long after the time when the relevance of that information has passed. — Clay A. Johnson

We are now shocked at the current spate of alphabetic scandals - IRS, AP, NSA, VA. But why are we surprised, given that Obama never told the truth about his relationships with the old terrorist Bill Ayers and former PLO ad hoc spokesman Rashid Khalidi, or about the creepy land deal with the crook Tony Rezko? If the Obama White House demonized the Tea Party as tea-baggers, or compared the Republican House opposition to terrorists and arsonists, why should we be astonished, given how he was elected to the U.S. Senate? Quite mysteriously, his primary opponent, Blair Hull, and his general-election opponent, Jack Ryan, both of whom were favored to win, had their confidential divorce records leaked. Their campaigns subsequently imploded. — Anonymous

No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed. — Rutherford B. Hayes

Democracy is a proposal (rarely realized) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns. Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision-makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the 'freedom' of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretences. Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation. Both — John Berger

Politics is a damn expensive business. I had one hell of a time trying to raise money as a candidate. I had to put a second mortgage on our house to get that campaign started, and I ended up spending over $300,000 to get elected. I believe that public financing of federal election campaigns is the only thing that will insure good candidates and save the two-party system. It is the most degrading thing in the world to go out with your hat in your hand and beg for money, but that's what you have to do if you haven't got your own resources. — Joe Biden

The folks like myself that do this for a living, we were expecting a regular campaign had built the databases, done all the new social media, learned our lessons from [Barack] Obama whipping us twice on how to do voter contact, and then Donald Trump gets in it and turns it into a national election. — Melissa Harris-Perry

The Bush campaign for re-election has officially begun. They're actually running television commercials. Have you seen any of the television commercials? In one of the commercials, you see George Bush for thirty seconds. In another commercial, you get to see George Bush for sixty seconds - kind of like his stint in the National Guard. — David Letterman

President Obama announced his re-election campaign, though it's not really a surprise. He did all the things that make it official: He filed the paperwork, redesigned his website, and printed another fake birth certificate. — Craig Ferguson

I am convinced that international terrorism gave itself the goal of not allowing the re-election of Bush. The statement by bin Laden in the final stages of the pre-election campaign is the best confirmation of this. — Vladimir Putin

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy. — Edward Abbey

Maintain your rage and enthusiasm for the campaign for the election now to be held and until polling day. — Gough Whitlam

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history. — Mark Shields

You don't defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. — Stephen Harper

Putin had told Yeltsin that he did not like election campaigns, and now he dismissed campaign promises as unachievable lies told by politicians and denigrated television advertisements as unseemly manipulation of gullible consumers. — Steven Lee Myers

Are you excited about the recall election? Arnold's campaign has a new slogan: 'Win one for the groper.' — David Letterman