Presidential Election Quotes & Sayings

Justices look solemn in their formal black robes, but every so often they like to have a little fun by taking on a strange case, or overturning a presidential election, that sort of thing. — Christopher Buckley

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

In November 2008, the day of the presidential election, Israeli military forces invaded Gaza and killed half a dozen Hamas militants. Well, that was followed by a missile exchange for a couple of weeks in both directions. — Noam Chomsky

When a presidential candidate is publicly requesting help from the Russians, you know that there is something seriously going wrong in the USA. — Steven Magee

Just after midnight, I text my parents who live in Florida: Please tell me you didn't help elect him.

No reply.

The next morning, New York City wakes up with a wet, gray yawn. The air is thick with mist. The city moves at a slower, muffled pace. New Yorkers rarely make eye contact; today isn't much different, except when eyes meet, they lock for a moment in shared grief. Everyone's shoulders bend forward, the world weighing heavier on them than it did yesterday.

The sidewalks and the coffee shops are quiet. Even the subway paces through its underground veins in somber silence. My husband tells me: "The city hasn't been this quiet since 9/11."

- Melissa Lirtsman — Erin Passons

When all is said and done and the e-book is written about politics and the Internet, it is not going to be about the presidential election. It will be about the smaller elections in aggregate that have a huge effect on people's lives. — Joe Green

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 care about the presidential elections. I always vote. Sometimes I've voted more than once, illegally. But you can't anymore. The picture ID has ruined everything. — John Waters

In every election cycle that I can recall, there comes a moment - or a few - where charges of elitism and claims of commonness are wielded by presidential candidates like a sword and shield: 'Vote for me 'cause I'm one of you. It's the other guy who's out of touch.' — John Ridley

People are already talking about the next presidential election. There's stories all over about who might run. At a recent speech, a prominent Democrat said that Hillary Clinton should not run because she can't win. Immediately after the speech, Hillary told her husband to shut up. — Conan O'Brien

The 2016 presidential election is ripe for the emergence of a game-changing political leader who either dramatically reforms one of the existing parties or mounts an independent bid. — Ron Fournier

The aim of the war in Iraq was to establish the US as the world superpower which could act unilaterally, virtually without allies, inside or outside Iraq. The timing of the conflict had nothing to do with fear of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with getting the war won in time for the run-up to next year's Presidential election in the US. The — Patrick Cockburn

No more than two opinions or ideas on any one issue should be out there, the General said. Look at the voting system. Same concept. We had multiple parties and candidates and look at the mess we had. Here you choose the left hand or the right and that's more than enough. Two choices and look at all the drama with every presidential election. Even two choices may be one too many. One choice is enough, and no choice may be even better. Less — Viet Thanh Nguyen

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

Because of racism, he can't govern effectively' is not a great argument for re-election. — James Taranto

In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history. — Juan Williams

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

I think we may be seeing the beginnings of a resurgence of civic-mindedness in this country. Hopefully the younger generations, which came out in record numbers during the last presidential election, will pass their enthusiasm on to their children. — Sandra Day O'Connor

People will have their excitements, and a good rousing persecution used to stir things like the burning of Chicago or a Presidential election in our day. — E.P. Roe

There are a number of Americans who shouldn't vote. The number is 57 percent, to judge by the combined total of Clinton and Perot ballots in the 1996 presidential election. — P. J. O'Rourke

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform, but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney can, contrary to conventional wisdom, make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins. — David Limbaugh

A man named Vicente Fox was sworn in as president of Mexico, ending seventy-five years of control by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Across the border, the United States Supreme Court released its landmark decision in Bush v. Gore, deciding the 2000 presidential election and ensuring the term "hanging chad" took its place permanently in the English lexicon. Leninist guerrillas launched an attack in Istanbul, and a series of bombs exploded in downtown Manila, killing twenty-two people and injuring dozens more. Cambodia's failed coup slipped from network news bulletins, and the country returned once more to relative international obscurity. — Dan Eaton

No one is confused about what a Democrat is in a presidential election. In every election other than a presidential election, our voters are confused. We've given out too many different messages. — Dannel Malloy

When contemplating General Eisenhower winning the Presidential election, Truman said, Hell sit here, and hell say, Do this! Do that! And nothing will happen. Poor Ikeit wont be a bit like the Army. Hell find it very frustrating. — Harry S. Truman

Most people enjoy 'potato-chip news' from time to time - to track a presidential election or the Oscars. However, some are particularly drawn to material that makes them feel shocked, frightened, insecure, or indignant, and that's what potato-chip news often provides. — Gretchen Rubin

How Obama approaches judicial selection - and how Republicans respond - now becomes an important story and will remain so until the Senate shuts down judicial confirmations, probably in the summer of 2016 if Senate custom in presidential-election years is followed. — Terry Eastland

'Green' is likely to be a big issue in the 2008 U.S. presidential election - largely in response to George Bush's suicidal refusal to engage with environmental issues. — Zac Goldsmith

In 2008, Barack Obama was the electoral equivalent of the Hula Hoop; a political Pet Rock; a craze, a fad, an irrational gadget. The latest have-to-have, must-vote-for candidate. — Mondo Frazier

One of the most surreal moments in this election was after the third debate, when I heard a talking head say, Al Gore won on substance, on the issues. But you have to give the victory to Bush because he seems presidential. — Bradley Whitford

On the human rights side, administration policy has been marked by indifference. When the people of Iran flooded the streets to protest the theft of their presidential election in June 2009, President Obama was silent for 11 days. — Elliott Abrams

The 2004 presidential election that saw George W. Bush win with 51 percent of the vote was the last one Republicans will ever win with the overwhelmingly white and male coalition they have now. — John Podhoretz

Everybody has seen what happens when an ordinary person takes on a title or an office. When a new president is inaugurated, he takes on the awe and respect of his office and begins to act like a president. Ordinary men (and I would certainly hope, one day, ordinary women)...lose their old roles and become the president. — Kaleel Jamison

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities. — Sarah Palin

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! — Andy Andrews

Part of the reason [Donald Trump] destroyed his Republican challengers is because they agree with him on issues. And he apparently struck a vein of entertainment among the Republican primary voters, so all they had left was kind of whining and insulting back and forth, as opposed to taking him on where I think a presidential election should. — Hillary Clinton

Liberals had tried convincing Americans to vote for them, but that kept ending badly. Except for Lyndon Johnson's aberrational 1964 landslide, Democrats have not been able to get a majority of white people to vote for them in any presidential election since 1948.13 Their only hope was to bring in new voters. Okay, fine. You won't vote for us, America? We tried this the easy way, but you give us no choice. We're going to overwhelm you with new voters from the Third World. As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center in 1998: "The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a generation. It will go down as the Kennedy family's greatest gift to the Democratic Party."14 — Ann Coulter

Presidential election results in 2008 and 2012 clarified that talk radio was not, in fact, running the country. — Timothy Noah

If you think all these terrible things about Obama, he asked the woman, how can you possibly be undecided?

Because if McCain dies, Palin would be president, she said. — John Heilemann

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. — Charles Krauthammer

As we march toward the reality that, by 2050, no one racial or ethnic group will hold a proportional majority in this country, racial suicide paranoia abounds. And for the white racist legislators in the red states, nothing is more threatening than a majority-brown country; it strips them of their historic power. The prospect of being outnumbered is what enabled the Tea Party's mutiny of Congress in 2010 after the election of Barack Obama, America's first black president, allowing it to cripple the Republican establishment; render the first major-party female presidential candidate powerless; and enable the rise of the racist, nationalistic, and misogynistic Donald Trump The white people who are still in charge believe that if their women don't start having lots of babies they- the white patriarchs - are going to become obsolete. — Dr. Willie Parker

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

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

I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box. — Thomas Jefferson

I know that Khalil will be famous one day - a rock star, a basketball hero, a politician who will become the first Arab American President of the United States because he is so beautiful, and he knows suffering, and he will be cured, and I know for sure: he will live long enough to enter a presidential election, he will live long past thirty-five. — Miah Arnold

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted. — Ann Coulter

It's not just tougher out there. It's become a situation where the contest is how much you can destroy the system, rather than how much you can make it work. It makes no difference if you have a 'D' or an 'R' after your name. There's no sense that this is about democracy, and after the election you have to work together, and knit the country together. The people in the game now just think to the first Tuesday in November, and not a day beyond it. — Peter Hart

I have not voted in a human presidential election for quite some time, Jonathan. Admittedly, it may not be my place. Still, do you know what really stops me from selecting a candidate?" Jonathan listened but mostly focused on containing his nausea. "It's a paradox, I know. It just seems that anyone smart enough to know the responsibility of such a seat of power would never be dumb enough to apply for it. — T. Ellery Hodges

If there were two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, who each committed to the same kind of fundamental reform, then the election would be an election between the vice presidential candidates. It'd be just like the regular election, except it would be one step down. — Lawrence Lessig

On Election Day, Ralph Nader will appear on the presidential ballot in only 45 states. Yeah, Nader said, this is really disappointing, I wanted to embarrass myself in all 50 states. That was the plan. — Conan O'Brien

[O]nce demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn't much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate's mood. — George Packer

At a press conference yesterday NASA announced that 2005 was the hottest year on record. It is so hot, and global warming is so bad, if the presidential election were held today, Al Gore would still lose. — Jay Leno

Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all just wanted to be one nation. Not a single American on September the 12, 2001, cared who won the next presidential election. — William J. Clinton

As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election. — Eddie Bernice Johnson

If we were to have a presidential election in Europe it would be an event that would spark a huge interest in people from Lisbon to Helsinki, just like national elections. And it would create a completely different political setting in Europe. — Wolfgang Schauble

Just 158 rich families contributed nearly half of the $176 million given to candidates in the first phase of the presidential election of 2016 - $138 million to Republicans and $20 million to Democrats. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Jeb Bush announced today on the Internet that he may run for president. The next presidential election could be Bush vs. Clinton. It will be like 1992 all over again except I won't be in rehab. — Craig Ferguson

Scientists say over the next hundred years, the coast of California will sink almost five feet. So the presidential candidates need to do something. Mitt Romney is conflicted. On one hand, he denies that global warming exists. But if California is under water, he would definitely win the next election. — Craig Ferguson

Today the Washington Post did an article; they compared the 2008 presidential election to the 1932 presidential election. They did a comparison, mainly because 1932 was the first time John McCain ran for president. — Conan O'Brien

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

In 2012, the far-right Golden Dawn won 21 seats in Greece's parliamentary election, the right-wing Jobbik gained ground in my native Hungary, and the National Front's Marine Le Pen received strong backing in France's presidential election. Growing support for similar forces across Europe points to an inescapable conclusion: the continent's prolonged financial crisis is creating a crisis of values that is now threatening the European Union itself. — George Soros

One of the problems we saw in the last presidential election in our party is that our nominee, while winning the election, which we ought never to forget, often lost sight of the difference between strategy and tactics. — Paul Begala

Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that. And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. — Joe Biden

A million dollars in the presidential election is a spit in the ocean. It's not a lot of money. — Kenneth Langone

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

It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America. — Jon Voight

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

Every four years in the presidential election, some new precedent is broken. — Nate Silver

Every election, a presidential candidate inevitably proposes a new cabinet agency. The idea is that this is the only way to solve a particular problem. Just create more government. — Christopher Buckley

The Pavlovian view of women voters - plug the words in, and they will respond - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands. But there's a difference between a private conversation and a presidential election, between what we want from our leaders. — Deborah Tannen

The lead singer of Creed says he won't endorse President Obama. Well that settles it
Obama will not win the 1998 presidential election. — Stephen Colbert

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

Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview] — Noam Chomsky

If you've got a business - you didn't build that. — Barack Obama

Summer has never been the same since the 2000 Presidential Election, when we still seemed to be a prosperous nation at peace with the world, more or less. Two summers later we were a dead-broke nation at war with all but three or four countries in the world, and three of those don't count. Spain and Italy were flummoxed and and England has allowed itself to be taken over by and stigmatized by some corrupt little shyster who enjoys his slimy role as a pimp and a prostitute all at once
selling a once-proud nation of independent-thinking people down the river and into a deadly swamp of slavery to the pimps who love Jesus and George Bush and the war-crazed U.S. Pentagon. — Hunter S. Thompson

The presidential election is a drama that we Americans have learned to wholly consume as entertainment, divorced completely from any expectations about concrete changes in our own lives. — Matt Taibbi

Thirteen years after the end of the Soviet Union, the American press establishment seemed eager to turn Ukraine's protested presidential election on November 21 into a new cold war with Russia. — Stephen Cohen

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

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election. — Glenn Greenwald

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

One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. — John Paul Stevens

In a new interview, the president discussed the upcoming election. He said that Hillary Clinton is going to do great as a presidential candidate. When asked how Biden would do, Obama said, 'Hillary's going to do great.' — Jimmy Fallon

Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election. — Joseph Sobran

To understand what's happening in the U.S. presidential election of 2016, you need to know what's going on in the year 2024! Soundscape: Where hearing is believing. — Royce Flippin

Once every 12 years there is a unique opportunity to reinforce the bonds between Mexico and the United States, when our presidential election cycles coincide. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Somebody asked me about the current choice we're being given in the presidential election. I said, Well, it's like two of the scariest movies I can imagine. — Dean Koontz

Even at the end of a presidential election campaign, we have no way to know what Mitt Romney really believes. — Carl Bernstein

You have two choices, [Plouffe] told Obama. You can stay in the Senate, enjoy your weekends at home, take regular vacations, and have a lovely time with your family. Or you can run for president, have your whole life poked at and pried into, almost never see your family, travel incessantly, bang your tin cup for donations like some street-corner beggar, lead a lonely, miserable life. — John Heilemann, Mark Halperin

Most major domestic programs got more money this year, and they're used to reflect the priorities of the upcoming year. One good example is, the Secret Service is getting $268 extra dollars because it's a presidential election year and the agency's going to be under more demands. — Susan Davis

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

Do you know what causes low voter turnout in America? It's the result of having the fate of our nation at stake. This began with the bitter presidential election of 1828, which pitted the education, cultivation, and puritan constraint of John Quincy Adams against the yahoo populism of Andrew Jackson, thereby deciding permanently whether America would become a shining city upon a hill or an overlighted strip mall along a highway. — Ozzy Osbourne

researchers like Dr. Eva Sapi have shown Lyme is like some other spirochetes - it has biofilms. These are very tough biofilms to defeat unless caught in the "acute stage." A tough, "mature biofilm" allows organisms to "laugh at" many antibiotics. Some medical professionals interested in Lyme often ignore the immune suppressing Bartonella bacterium, which is more common than Lyme. Ignoring coinfections may increase the risk of fatality with Babesia and possibly FL1953. These healers also may not realize that the highly genetically complex Lyme spirochete appears to have a troublesome biofilm. Performing a simple direct test at laboratory companies whose testing kits have reduced sensitivity will probably result in more negatives for tick-borne diseases. The ultimate result is anti-science and anti-truth. Searching for tick infections with one test is like writing in "Lincoln" at the next presidential election. — James L. Schaller

It was a presidential election year, and as a member of a consortium of Ivy League radio stations, we participated in 'network' coverage of election night. — Andrea Mitchell

A comic book publisher says he's trying to increase voter turnout in the presidential election by publishing comic books about John McCain and Barack Obama. Yeah, the publisher said that the election comic books are targeted at first-time voters and long-time virgins. — Conan O'Brien

Trustworthiness is the thing that you need the most going to a presidential election. Honest and trustworthy is one of the main questions in any presidential election. — Dana Perino

We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win. — Barry Crimmins

We can't even expect our immigration officials not to make citizens of convicted felons.1 Tens of thousands of immigrants have been granted citizenship after being convicted of crimes in the United States. And, no, you can't see their names or read about their crimes. A year before the 1996 presidential election, the Clinton White House worked feverishly to naturalize 1 million immigrants in time for Clinton's reelection. Criminal background checks were jettisoned for 200,000 applicants, so that citizenship was granted to at least 70,000 people with FBI criminal records and 10,000 with felony records.2 Murderers, robbers, and rapists were all made our fellow Americans so the Democrats would have a million new voters by the 1996 election. In 2013 alone, the Obama administration released 36,007 convicted criminal aliens with about 88,000 convictions among them - including 426 for rape and 193 for murder.3 They'll soon be your fellow citizens, too. — Ann Coulter

There is one catagory of advertising which is totally uncontrolled and flagrantly dishonest: the television commercials for candidates in Presidential elections. — David Ogilvy

It was a long, difficult summer of 2004. That was a leap year, so several things happened - the Olympics and presidential election. And right in the middle of the election campaign - and I don't think this was an accident - the 9/11 Commission delivers its report. — Michael Hayden

After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, I was heartened to see him issue an Open Government Initiative on his first full day in office. — Jesse Ventura

After listening to Rick Santorum, I'm now for late-term abortions (say up to age 53). — Quentin R. Bufogle