Quotes about elections

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

— Franklin P. Adams

You don't have to fool all the people all of the time; you just have to fool enough to get elected.

— Gerald Barzan

To win in this country these days you have got to campaign down to a thirteen year-old's level of mental development .

— Willie Brown

Defeat has its lessons as well as victory.

— Patrick Buchanan

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

— Edmund Burke

Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother.

— Robert C. Byrd

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

— Barry Crimmins

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

— Mario Cuomo

Get the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.

— Frank Dane

I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.

— W. C. Fields

I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

— W. S. Gilbert

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.

— Newt Gingrich

Everybody except us is running for governor.

— Barry Gray

The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.

— St. Gregory The Great

The election is not very far off when a candidate can recognize you across the street.

— Kin Hubbard

anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.

— June Jordan

I have just received the following wire from my generous Daddy. It says, Dear Jack: Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.

— John F. Kennedy

If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.

— Jay Leno

Elections are held to delude the populace into believing that they are participating in government.

— Gerald F. Lieberman

If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.

— Abraham Lincoln

Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.

— Walter Lippmann

Vote early and vote often.

— William Porcher Miles

A new poll showed that if the election was held today, people would be confused because it is normally held in November.

— Kevin Nealon

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

— Richard M. Nixon

Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about character issues. Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three-legged races and pie-eating contests. It would make better TV.

— P. J. O'Rourke

There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

— Chris Patten

My opponent called me a cream puff. Well, I rushed out and got the baker's union to endorse me.

— Claiborne Pell

Which one of the three candidates would you want your daughter to marry?

— H. Ross Perot

The only thing we learn from new elections is we learned nothing from the old.

— American Proverb

The Republicans have their splits right after election and Democrats have theirs just before an election.

— Will Rogers

There isn't any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.

— Will Rogers

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names, but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.

— Mort Sahl

Votes should be weighed not counted.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

The advance planning and sense stimuli employed to capture a $10 million cigarette or soap market are nothing compared to the brainwashing and propaganda blitzes used to ensure control of the largest cash market in the world: the Executive Branch of the United States Government.

— Phyllis Schlafly

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

— George Bernard Shaw

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

— George Bernard Shaw

Everyone was tired with the old style politicians and their flowery rhetoric. I just told them there are tough times ahead, but that they would be less tough with me in charge.

— Anibal Cavaco Silva

Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.

— Anastasio Somoza

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal -- that you can gather votes like box tops -- is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

If you want to get elected, shake hands with 25, 000 people between and November 7.

— Harry S Truman

Let's try winning and see what it feels like. If we don't like it, we can go back to our traditions.

— Paul Tsongas

There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.

— Theodore White

One guy wants to help the rich the other the poor neither one works since raising taxes causes instability. They should do neither and eliminate everything from the budget until we’re making more then we’re spending. It's not rocket science.

— James Dye

They know mccain is going to be the loser. They sealed the deal with Palin. I would like them all to fuck off.

— James Dye

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's-license age than at voting age.

— Marshall Mcluhan

In politics women type the letters, lick the stamps, distribute the pamphlets and get out the vote. Men get elected.

— Clare Boothe Luce