Quotes & Sayings About Winning Elections

The 2014 elections are not about winning or losing, but of ensuring a bright future for India. It is about sowing the seeds for a 'Bhavya' and a 'Divya Bharat'. — Narendra Modi

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

The ideas that accompany that victory, the ideas and the policies that are related to those ideas that are implemented after you win the election. And then it's not just one election; you have to keep winning elections. You have to keep defeating liberals, and it's the same thing here in the Brexit vote. — Rush Limbaugh

The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society. — Paul Krugman

Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections. — Danny Strong

We don't believe that winning elections and winning any amount of votes will win freedom in Ireland. At the end of the day, it will be the cutting edge of the IRA which will bring freedom. — Martin McGuinness

[O]ur Founding Fathers enshrined a constitutional separation of powers for the ages undeluded by the fantasy that angels would win elections. — Bruce Fein

Most politicians believe in just one thing - winning elections. They'll say anything to get in office and stay there. — Harry Browne

We have made too much of one or two people, and we think that they can win or lose elections for us. Don't be depressed if one particular person transgresses. It doesn't lose an election unless the Party loses faith in itself. — Margaret Thatcher

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

If free will exists, why do the tallest candidates with the best hair usually win elections ? — Scott Adams

Three of the last four [elections], '06, '08, and '12, were disastrous for Republicans. And they were years in which we just we stayed quiet, we went along the get-along, we didn't stand on principle. The only year that was a good year for Republicans was 2010, when we painted in bold colors, not in pale pastels. We stood for principle. I think winning this fight right now is the most important thing we can do to see significant victories in 2014. — Ted Cruz

After the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia offered its new structure of government to the states for ratification, members of the Dismal Swamp Company differed in their opinions of it. Visitors to Mount Vernon heard George Washington say that he was "very anxious" to see all states ratify the Constitution. Alexander Donald wrote: "I never saw him so keen for any thing in my life, as he is for the adoption of the new Form of Government." Conversations at Mount Vernon touched on demagogues winning state elections to pursue "their own schemes," on the "impotence" of the Continental Congress, and on the danger of "Anarchy and civil war." Washington concluded: "it is more than probable we shall exhibit the last melancholy proof, that Mankind are not competent to their own government without the means of coercion in the Sovereign." By "sovereign" he meant not the people but the national government. Without a new, stronger government, he said, America faced "impending ruin. — Charles Royster

If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can't win many elections after a famine, and you don't like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act. — Amartya Sen

In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can't otherwise win their fights through elections, can't win their fights in Congress, can't win their fights for the Presidency, and can't win their fights in Courts, For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left - a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy. — Elizabeth Warren

I think that our reliance on dynasty is part of the problem here, because dynasty is inherently undemocratic. It's a very entitled thing to suggest that only one member of one family can save a country of 180 million people. It has to be about people who live in constituencies coming forward to represent them, not the sort of parachuted, elite class that comes in, wins elections and then leaves. — Fatima Bhutto

We conservatives can win the ideological battles on a level playing field. Our ideas are better. Given fair elections based on contributions from regular voters, instead of $100,000 checks from business-as-usual special interests, we will prevail. — John McCain

The Republican party is not a church. It does not promulgate doctrine and then exclude those who fail to share it. But political parties must stand for something, or they will be unable to generate enthusiastic support from the volunteers needed to burn shoe leather and calories winning competitive elections. — Ralph E. Reed Jr.

Conservatives talk constantly about the centrality of morality and the family in their politics, while liberals did not talk about these things until conservatives started winning elections by doing so. — George Lakoff

I'm an intellectual Thatcherite, just as I was an intellectual Powellite, and I think it important that the Conservative party should be in good hands and that it should win elections. — Maurice Cowling

General Wesley Clark commented on Gore endorsing Howard Dean. He said endorsements don't win elections. Hey, in this country, votes don't even win elections. — Jay Leno

The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections, — Steve Elmendorf

To straddle the middle ground and win elections, we have to be in charge of the political agenda. This can only be done by not being beaten in the argument with our critics. They complain that I come down too hard on their arguments. But wrong ideas have to be challenged before they influence public opinion and make for problems. Those who try to be clever at the expense of the government should not complain if my replies are as sharp as their criticisms. — Lee Kuan Yew

You can't ultimately dodge defeat by winning close elections. — Bill James

Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors ... History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the reverse. — Rudy Giuliani

The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals. — Rush Limbaugh

Starting in 1994, with the Republican election of Congress, I think [Rush] Limbaugh made a difference in electing the Republican majority. In the following three elections, he made the difference holding the majority. And in 2000, in the presidential race in Florida, he was the difference between Gore and Bush winning Florida, and thus the Presidency. — Tony Blankley

Tony Blair was a good politician but not a good Prime Minister, and that's what we don't want to be. We don't want to be just people who are good at winning elections: we want to be good at governing. I think we benefit from having seen the mistakes that we think Tony Blair made in 1997. — George Osborne

We may like to think politics is a battle of ideas and that the best idea wins out. But that's not true in most elections. Most elections are about the worst ideas losing, not the best ideas winning. — Chuck Todd

At least in a casino, depending on the game, people have a slightly less than fifty percent chance of winning. In the long run, the house always wins, but a gambler can get lucky every once in a while. In the Tyranny's elections, both options play for the house. If someone outside of Party A or B tries to run for office, it becomes the house's mission to make sure everyone knows that only A and B are viable candidates. After being told this a hundred times, people believe it. After being told anything a hundred times, people will believe anything. — Chris Dietzel

Mandates are not objective realities but subjective interpretations of elections sold successfully by the winning candidate or party. — Thomas E. Mann

Today, a politician does not just need public support to win elections; he needs it to govern. — Dick Morris

In the United States 95% of the people who win elections have the most money. That's it. So, money is a big part of elections. But that happens all the time. — George Clooney

In American elections there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates win or lose, the next morning we wake up as Americans. — John F. Kerry

While it is not likely that Democrats will start winning statewide elections tomorrow in Alabama, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, or Utah, they will never win if they don't plant a flag and start organizing. My own state of Vermont is a good example. Forty-five years ago, Vermont was one of the most Republican states in the country. Today, as a result of a lot of hard work by many people, it is one of the most progressive. It — Bernie Sanders

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing. — Donald J. Boudreaux

There is great potential and deep fragility [in Malaysia] that can be used by any group that stresses on religion, pushing towards Islam, rejecting people and alienating migrants - anything can be used to win the next elections. So these are the signs of fragility that is very much there. — Tariq Ramadan

When our eyes fall from God to humanity, social ills replace sin, horizontal problems replace the fundamental vertical problem between us and God, winning elections eclipses winning souls. — Mark Dever

If Democrats want to start winning elections in this country, they're going to have to start connecting with voters as well as I connect with my fans. — Zach Braff

It's kind of hard to win most elections on anti-family, immorality, and Satan-worship. — Ed Helms

The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win. — Leonid Brezhnev

Our [Republicans'] object is to avoid having stupid candidates who can't win general elections, who are undisciplined, can't raise money, aren't putting together the support necessary to win a general election campaign, because this money is too difficult to raise to be spending it on behalf of candidates who have little chance of winning in a general election. — Karl Rove

Elections have consequences. And I fundamentally believe - this is my personal opinion, I know it's a slightly partisan thing to say - to really do what we think needs to be done, we're going to have to win some elections. — Paul Ryan

There's going to be a lot of people that don't like you, and there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of trying to win them over one by one, you need to do things that are getting huge swaths of votes [in the elections]. — Michael Schur

If you look at attitudes today and where they are headed, it's clear to me that supporting equal rights, including the rights to civil marriage, is a net positive for winning elections, as well as the right thing to do. — Ken Mehlman

By then, Dad and I were both saying that evangelicals who would not take a stand on abortion had denied their faith. By the early '80s, most evangelical leaders (who wanted to keep their jobs) came over to our side on "the issue" or were intimidated into silence if they still had doubts. But the spiritual-versus-political debate was over. Billy Graham might be maintaining his nonpolitical stance, but we activists had won. Evangelical Christianity was now more about winning elections than about winning souls. After — Frank Schaeffer

The big secret to winning elections is to get more votes than your opponent. My friend Representative Robin Hayes is a good example to study. — Jesse Helms

John Prescott has made the government look greedy and ridiculous. Labour is seen as the corrupt party. The government has been fulfilling the old rule that oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them. — William Rees-Mogg

I think it is important for us to be careful about the language we use, which is why I've been critical of Donald Trump. Disparaging women, disparaging Hispanics, that's not a sign of strength. Making fun of disabled people? We're never going to win elections if we don't have a more broader, unifying message. — Jeb Bush