Political Election Quotes & Sayings

Political impotence is finished. Today is the beginning of the orgasm. All the people, I promise you, will feel the orgasm of next year's presidential election. — Vladimir Zhirinovsky

The big post-election story if Obama wins the presidency will be in the hands of the ethically embattled Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich. He's not very popular, and has a chance to use his power to appoint an Obama replacement as a step in the direction of political rehabilitation. — Chuck Todd

The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days. — Juan Williams

I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree of enthusiasm. — Tom Stoppard

Spin is overrated. It is strategy, not spin, that wins elections. — Dick Morris

100 political parties put together can never defeat the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, come 2015 presidential election. — Patience Jonathan

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

I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there. — Ellen Goodman

Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn. — James Baldwin

The Sangh Parivar, against which I had been waging a war, misled the people. My opponents used the Election Commission and the bureaucracy to win a political battle. — Lalu Prasad Yadav

People didn't vote left or right in the election. They voted for putting an end to all the primitive political history. — Fatos Nano

During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone. — Questlove

We, the Black masses, don't want these leaders who seek our support coming to us representing a certain political party. They must come to us today as Black Leaders representing the welfare of Black people. We won't follow any leader today who comes on the basis of political party. Both parties (Democrat and Republican) are controlled by the same people who have abused our rights, and who have deceived us with false promises every time an election rolls around. — Malcolm X

I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter. — Jeane Kirkpatrick

Security Division of NASA: Headed by Werner von Braun. Nazi headquarters were moved to the Caribbean after World War II. The National Security Council, patterned after Hitler's intelligence apparat, provided the framework inside the White House for political assassinations, Watergate "Plumbers" and election manipulations. Agents from military intelligence and the armed forces were concealed inside defense projects. The Syndicate worked with the Defense Industrial Security Command. Robert Sheridan, appointed by George McGovern to "investigate Watergate for the Democrats," was the direct liaison to departments involved in the Kennedy assassination. The Watergate parallels are too great to not suspect a continuous working of this operation.28 — Mae Brussell

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

We have the best congressmen that money can buy. — Jo Ann Dearing

We have got to change the political culture in America. We need a political revolution. That means we are working on politics not just three weeks before an election but 365 days a year. — Bernie Sanders

The things that have made America great are being subverted for the things that make Americans rich. — Louise Erickson

For myself the delay may be compared with a reprieve; for in confidence I assure you, with the world it would obtain little credit that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities and inclination which is necessary to manage the helm. — George Washington

You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side. — Herbert Hoover

Where you stand should not depend on where you sit. — Jane Bryant Quinn

Is there anything more dangerous to the cause of liberty than a politician fixated on re-election? — Neal Boortz

When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with. — Bernie Sanders

I believe in the critical importance of participating in the political system - from voting to standing for election. It's both rewarding and necessary that men and women of good will and clear thinking engage in honest, open debate. — Michael Nutter

Repeat a lie a thousand times and it become a successful political campaign. — Ljupka Cvetanova

You need the commitment of people that aren't worried about that next election, who are going to do the right thing and worry about the next generation. It's called political courage. And I can tell you, with me, you don't have to ask whether I have political courage. — Jeff Fitzgerald

Ma Ying-jeou tends to use cross-strait policy as an election tool and a political tool, too, and my position is that we don't use that as a political tool because that is an issue that is critical and essential to the interests of the Taiwanese people. — Tsai Ing-wen

Is Stephen Harper using the imagined fear of widespread security threats to score political points before the next election? — Elizabeth May

If I want to make political decisions, I should stand for election. If I want to do something in the legal field, that's different; that is my - they are my qualifications, but you know, the politicians are the ones who stand up there and are answerable to the people. — Cherie Blair

A lot of television stuff is mean-spirited, and I think that's how political advertising got so mean-spirited, to where people are throwing things at the television set every time we have an election. — Stan Freberg

On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography : lies , distortions, and half-truths half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion. — Bill Moyers

The United States brags about its political system, but the President says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves. — Deng Xiaoping

The general election of 1983 has produced one important result that has passed virtually without comment in the media. It is that, for the first time since 1945, a political party with an openly socialist policy has received the support of over eight and a half million people. This is a remarkable development by any standards and it deserves some analysis ... the 1983 Labour manifesto commanded the loyalty of millions of voters and a democratic socialist bridge-head in public understanding and support can be made. — Tony Benn

Ah, political physics. Someone wins an election and, poof, they are a candidate for vice president. Ridiculous. — Mark McKinnon

The security intended to the general liberty consists in the frequent election and in the rotation of the members of Congress. — James Madison

Don't vote, it only encourages them. — Billy Connolly

The first several scenes are about sexual addiction. They're not specifically political at all ... I didn't sit down and think, I am going to write something about the religious right. I started out by writing something about sexual addiction, and it evolved ... I don't look at a calendar and say, Oh! There's going to be an election in 1996. I think now, in 1993, I'll start writing a play that will be ready for it. — Christopher Durang

Citizens are starting not to excuse political candidates who have web sites that do nothing but throw virtual confetti. — David Weinberger

Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents. — David Frum

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality. — Mark Forsyth

The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working just a little bit harder: a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vote, the next committee meeting. These noble efforts aren't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they are tending the seaweed on its watery grave.
The times call for a new generation of book hunters. Like the book hunters of the Middle Ages, the new book hunters take it as their mission to uncover and salvage the best of what came before: to cherish it; hold it up for praise and emulation; study it; above all, to love it and pass it on. — Paul D. Miller

We're not going to fix government until we fix citizenship. — Jennifer Pahlka

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. — George Will

Since the majority is always wrong, might we try one election day where all the losers take office? — Robert Breault

The fundamental question pertaining to voting ethics which Christians must ask at this presidential election is this: "What are the binding principles established by God in the Bible for selecting a civil magistrate?" All other questions are secondary or irrelevant. Once this standard is determined it is our duty to wisely apply the principles and precepts to our American context and to obey. All attempts by Christians to obfuscate our duty to repair to "the standard" by sprinkling the debate with the theology of pragmatics and partisan politics is a loss to the Church because it means that we are more concerned with manipulating a political process then simply obeying the sovereign God — Douglas W. Phillips

Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two thirds of the government and that party can't keep the promise that it made to you during election time and you're dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party, you're not only a chump but you're a traitor to your race. — Malcolm X

Mandates are rarely won on election night. They are earned after Inauguration Day by leaders who spend their political capital wisely, taking advantage of events without overreaching. — Ron Fournier

I have been tested. I have beaten breast cancer. I have buried a child. I started as a secretary. I fought my way to the top of corporate America while being called every B word in the book. I fought my way into this election and on to this debate stage while all the political insiders and the pundits told, "it couldn't be done." — Carly Fiorina

The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012. — Steven Rattner

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

The 2004 Election marks the first time in modern political history that Republican voter turnout matched Democratic turnout in a presidential election year. — Jeff Miller

I'm very concerned with what's going on the news, but I would not call myself a political animal, per se. I pay more attention during election years, or if I see some topic or issue that I care about. But I would never call myself a political animal or political junkie. — Keegan-Michael Key

I grew up in a highly political home. My mother was the co-chair of the 300 Group, an organisation whose aim was to get more women MPs into parliament, and she herself stood in the 1987 election, the year before she died. — Noreena Hertz

I've said it before, history repeats itself for those who don't learn from the past. Can we please learn from all this? Please? Or is everyone waiting for yet another savior to come along and charm them Hollywood style if freedom is still around for America's next election? — L.M. Fields

In republican government the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this ... is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions, and their common dependence on the society, will admit. — James Madison

A new movement reinforced by activists such as Buddhist monks, physicians who practised traditional medicine, teachers, farmers, and laborers brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike into the political helm. The leaders of the Davulawatta community considered this election a personal achievement. They saw this as a people's government and appreciated its genuine interest in fulfilling the needs of the common people. They trusted that the present government would eradicate poverty and the caste discrimination, and work to promote self-esteem. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

So now the question is, basically, right now, how will the Osama Bin Laden tape affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, that he probably set up bin Laden to this thing. — Walter Cronkite

The big story today, Barack Obama was accused of insulting Sarah Palin when he criticized Republican policies by saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Political experts say that if Obama keeps insulting Palin, he could lose the election and win a job at MSNBC. — Conan O'Brien

It's a presidential [election] year [2016], certainly everyone is talking about it, but if the history of the show tells us anything, the Big Brother cast does not usually discuss political issues like that in the house. — Allison Grodner

Everybody knows politics is a contact sport. — Barack Obama

The Senate decided they will be smoke-free. They ordained that all public areas in the Senate are now smoke-free. However, the senators themselves will still be allowed to blow smoke up each other's asses. — Bill Maher

In short, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, so long as the goose does not die before the next election and no one traces the politicians' fingerprints on the murder weapon. — Thomas Sowell

The only true allegiance a politician has is to his own re-election. — Michelle Malkin

I thought that conclusion that we leaped to right after the election, that has been disproven statistically so many times, I don't know why Republicans would advocate that advocating for comprehensive immigration reform is somehow a political solution for the Republicans losing a percentage of Hispanics. I probably have less appetite for this than either the Senate or colleagues in the House, certainly the Democrats and most likely members of the Republican Conference. They are still wrestling with trying to get their education up to a level where they can actually advocate for policy. — Steve King

Carl Schmitt could boast with some justice that the Nazi revolution was orderly and disciplined. But the reason lies not so much within the Nazis themselves as in the lack of an effective opposition. For millions the Nazi ideology did assuage their anxiety, did end their alienation, and did give hope for a better future. Other millions watched passively, not deeply committed to resistance. "Let them have a chance" was a typical attitude. Hitler took the chance and made the most of it. — George L. Mosse

For the institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from exisiting national parliaments. — Larry Siedentop

From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history. — Marco Rubio

The Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leader in public, the Liberals naturally wanted to defeat him, and the newspapers were out to get him. It was a dreadful campaign on his part, for he lost his head, bullied his electors when he should have wooed them, and got into a wrangle with a large newspaper, which he threatened to sue for libel. He was defeated on election day so decisively that it was obviously a personal rather than a political rejection. — Robertson Davies

If the World Series runs until election day, the networks will run the first one-half inning and project the winner. — Lindsey Nelson

The current political tension is very serious. We have not yet ruled out a boycott of the election. — Abhisit Vejjajiva

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popular election. — Augustus William Hare

Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: "For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone." A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd. — Frankie Boyle

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask, why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx are raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners, or by upstart would be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. — Jared Diamond

At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam. — Paddy Ashdown

[J]ust from a political perspective, do you think the president of the United States going into re-election wants gas prices to go up higher? ... Look, here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices: I want gas prices lower because they hurt families. — Barack Obama

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

Over the years, the British had strategically pitted the Muslims against the Hindus, supporting the All India Muslim League and encouraging the notion that the Muslims were a distinct political community. Throughout British India, separate electorates had been offered to Muslims, underscoring their separateness from Hindus and sowing the seeds of communalism. Teh Morley-Minto reforms in 1908 had allowed direct election for seats and separate or communal representation for Muslims. This was the harbinger for the formation of the Muslim League in 1906. In 1940, the Muslim League, representing one-fifth of the total population of India, became a unifying force. They were resentful that they were not sufficiently represented in Congress and feared for the safety of Islam. — Prem Kishore

When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience. — Glenn Beck

The Constitution never even mentions political parties, let alone the Republican and Democratic parties, yet all the election laws help to protect them from competition. — Bob Barr

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. — Pete Seeger

Maybe I should have gone into politics. If you were a political activist, election season brought moments of intensity, whichever side you were on, and meanwhile here I was inarguably withering away, — Michel Houellebecq

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate. — Julia Gillard

You'd think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three. — John Podhoretz

Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters. — Upton Sinclair

He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Political analysts say that President Bush's re-election strategy is to try and convince Americans that he's a war president. I don't get that, do you think that'll work? I mean, don't you think that if he tries to convince the American people that we need a war president, isn't he afraid that they're going to vote for the guy that was actually in a war? — Jay Leno

The Greens have not been providing you with the full information about where their money comes from or what it's about. I think the Greens in this upcoming state election should resign if they're being funded by an offshore political power. It's tantamount to treason and something needs to be done about it. — Clive Palmer

The Syrians lost out because they happened to have their revolution during an election cycle in America, France, and bizarrely, some kind of election cycle in Russia. Obama wasn't going to be seen to commit anything to Syria, that would be political suicide, but he's also got a Nobel Peace Prize sitting on his mantelpiece. — Paul Conroy

Doesn't it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle? — Joe Bageant

for the 2016 election, the political war chest accumulated by the Kochs and their small circle of friends was projected to be $889 million, completely dwarfing the scale of money that was considered deeply corrupt during the Watergate days. The — Jane Mayer

What we need to consider about the computer has nothing to do with its efficiency as a teaching tool. We need to know in what ways it is altering our conception of learning, and how, in conjunction with television, it undermines the old idea of school. Who cares how many boxes of cereal can be sold via television? We need to know if television changes our conception of reality, the relationship of the rich to the poor, the idea of happiness itself. A preacher who confines himself to considering how a medium can increase his audience will miss the significant question: In what sense do new media alter what is meant by religion, by church, even by God? And if the politician cannot think beyond the next election, then we must wonder about what new media do to the idea of political organization and to the conception of citizenship. — Neil Postman

Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.54 He argued that Southern white Democrats had become so angered and alienated by the Democratic Party's support for civil rights reforms, such as desegregation and busing, that those voters could be easily persuaded to switch parties if those racial resentments could be maintained. — Michelle Alexander

Their approach is to exploit divisions rather than bridge them. Perhaps that's an effective political strategy, but it's lousy way to govern a country, especially one as diverse as ours. Once you've divided people against one another - East against West, urban against rural, Quebec against the rest of Canada - so you can win an election, it's very hard to pull them back together again to solve our shared problems. — Justin Trudeau

New racial minorities now constitute a fresh and welcome presence in the suburbs and slow-growing rural areas as well as in big cities. They are a much-needed tonic for a labor force that would otherwise be starting to shrink. Furthermore, they will serve as a necessary conduit to other nations in today's increasingly globalized economy. The political clout of racial minorities, both new and old, was demonstrated in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, and diversity within the electorate continues to increase more rapidly than most political strategists could have anticipated only a couple of election cycles ago. — William H. Frey

Elections are the formal processes by which those decisions are recorded. The regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political speech is clearly unrelated to regulating an election's "time" or "place." Can — Anonymous

Heading into the race, the perception among political professionals and the press had been that the rival campaign squadrons were more or less evenly matched. But as the smoke cleared, a consensus quickly emerged that the Democrats had methodically been building an atomic clock while the Republicans were trifling with Tinkertoys. Chicago's mockery of Boston was hushed but withering. — Mark Halperin

If America is to be strong in the future, Americans must see America as home, not divided by race or region. Build American jobs for the future and come together with compassion to solve problems. — Phil Mitchell