Elections Politics Refugees Quotes

It is still possible, in an election, to use the word emigrant in such a way that it damages one's opponent, ~ Heinrich Boll

The only candidate I'd allow to play my music would be Bigfoot, and unless we're talking about foraging for squirrels, he's notoriously apolitical. ~ Greg Gutfeld

You are worse than a corrupt politician if you don't vote, because tomorrow. You will be the first to complain about bad service delivery and how bad the country is being run by bad leaders and criminals. ~ De Philosopher DJ Kyos

Can't wait for tomorrow when I get to exercise my patriotic duty as an American: Complaining about how long it's taking to VOTE. ~ Stephen Colbert

In our hearts we know that with a different fate, we, too, could be in the ranks of the dispossessed, stripped of our identities and belonging nowhere. The refugee becomes a sinister symbol of what can quickly happen once personhood is denied and people are transformed into disposable units of contemptible impediments to the greed or power-mongering of others. ~ Dave Mearns

Talk is cheap, voting is free; take it to the polls... ~ Nanette L. Avery

For years, liberals have demonstrated a near religious devotion to the cause of 'cleaning up elections' with campaign finance reform, the wondrous panacea that would finally rescue our great country from corruption in politics ... How anyone could believe that corrupt politicians could or would legislate away their own corruption is completely beyond me. ~ Anthony Gregory

For the stability of the Government, the people should have a considerable voice in the elections. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

[Stump speeches] are to oratory what a stump is to a tree. ~ Jon Stewart

No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them - campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again ~ William J. Clinton

To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them. ~ Aristophanes

Fear sticks like a barb in the mind. Someone cold enough to take advantage of it can attach strings to those barbs and make puppets of men and women. ~ Lance Conrad

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse. ~ Ralph Nader

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. ~ Gore Vidal

For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my 'race,' unless I was permitted to put 'human.' The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put 'white,' which is not even a color let alone a 'race,' and I sternly declined to put 'Caucasian,' which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you 'black. ~ Christopher Hitchens

When your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but also, you are guilty of violation of the rights of freedom of the same people that you purport to want to lead. Like any match, elections is competition towards democracy, and all competitions have rules that set guidelines in that particular competition. Any violation of such rules renders that competition invalid. True democracy does not condone compromises. True democracy upholds and adheres to the rule of law, for it is the rule of law that can explicitly define democracy. ~ Akuku Mach Pep

Politics and sports are the same thing in some ways. I like sports; I don't like the sports aspect of politics. The conventions are basically the playoffs, and the election's the Super Bowl. To me, it doesn't feel important. ~ Hari Kondabolu

Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war. ~ Sinclair Lewis

The election of Donald Trump confirmed everything I knew of my country and none of what I could accept. The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right.

I still want Obama to be right. I still would like to fold myself into the dream. This will not be possible. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Being political doesn't only or principally mean caring what party wins the next election; to be political is to care about the happiness of strangers. ~ Alain De Botton

When you say politics, you conjure a whole bunch of associations: elections, campaigning, debates, fundraising. None of this exists in Russia! We are still fighting not for election victories but for having elections at all. ~ Garry Kasparov

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

A less well known impact of immigrant populations is the increase that destination states gain in Congress where apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives is calculated on the basis of a state's entire adult population regardless of legal status. And, because each state's electoral college vote is the sum of the number of its representatives in the House and its two senators, high immigration states play a larger role in presidential elections than they might if only adult citizens and legal aliens were counted in population surveys. ~ Edward S. Greenberg

Do the unexpected. Take 20 minutes out of your day, do what young people all over the world are dying to do: vote. ~ Rick Mercer

The people who explain politics for a living – the politicians themselves, their advisers, the media who cover them – love to reach conclusions like this one. Elections are decided by charismatic personalities, strategic maneuvers, the power of rhetoric, the zeitgeist of the political moment. The explainers cloak themselves in loose-fitting theories because they offer a narrative comfort, unlike the more honest acknowledgment that elections hinge on the motivations of millions of individual human beings and their messy, illogical, and often unknowable psychologies. ~ Sasha Issenberg

They [Nicaragua] haven't had elections because they are in a state of seige by the United States. They would have had elections if the U.S. had left them alone. But the U.S. has mounted a full scale war against them. So how can you ask them to behave normally? ~ Allen Ginsberg

At the federal level, this problem could be greatly alleviated by abolishing the Electoral College system. It's the winner-take-all mathematics from state to state that delivers so much power to a relative handful of voters. It's as if in politics, as in economics, we have a privileged 1 percent. And the money from the financial 1 percent underwrites the microtargeting to secure the votes of the political 1 percent. Without the Electoral College, by contrast, every vote would be worth exactly the same. That would be a step toward democracy. ~ Cathy O'Neil

The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes. ~ Millicent Fenwick

Every single day, our governments allow many of those who have never killed even a single plant or animal to starve to death, but feed - more than once - many of those who have each killed many people intentionally. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country. ~ Ambrose Bierce

In the elaborate con that is American electoral politics, the Republican voter has long been the easiest mark in the game, the biggest dope in the room. Everyone inside the Beltway knows this. The Republican voters themselves are the only ones who never saw it. Elections ~ Matt Taibbi

When it comes to politics and elections, far too many Christians spend more time appealing to family, history and tradition, culture, racial expediency, and personal preference than they do to what the Bible teaches. ~ Tony Evans

General Motors, General Mills, General Foods, general ignorance, general apathy, and general cussedness elect presidents and Congressmen and maintain them in power. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson's investment theory of politics, as he calls it - very outstanding political economist - which essentially - I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state. ~ Noam Chomsky

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust. ~ Grover Cleveland

Nineteenth-century liberalism had assumed that man was a rational being who operated naturally according to his own best interests, so that in the end, what was reasonable would prevail. On this principle liberals defended extension of the suffrage toward the goal of one man, one vote. But a rise in literacy and in the right to vote, as the event proved, did nothing to increase common sense in politics. The mob that is moved by waving the bloody shirt, that decides elections in response to slogans - Free Silver, Hang the Kaiser, Two Cars in Every Garage - is not exhibiting any greater political sense than Marie Antoinette, who said, "Let them eat cake," or Caligula, who made his horse a consul. The common man proved no wiser than the decadent aristocrat. He has not shown in public affairs the innate wisdom which democracy presumed he possessed. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Forgot to live-tweet the election last night, so I'm post-tweeting today. I'll start as soon as my fingers unclench from their rage fists. ~ Stephen Colbert

A priest is someone like whom, we are told, we need to be to get into heaven. A politician is someone for whom, we are told, we need to vote to get heaven. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible. ~ Saul Alinsky

Democracy saved you from being a slave, now don't try to be someone's master. ~ Amit Kalantri

In the United States [ ... ] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy. ~ Robert W. McChesney

Democracy is a revelation, but it's complicated. There are elections to hold, politics to create, rights to assert, grievances to settle and institutions to build. To many, it's exhilarating. For others, it can be disappointing when it turns out that democracy doesn't immediately make life better. ~ Atifete Jahjaga