Political Campaigns Quotes

The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound. ~ Bradley A. Smith

[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments. ~ Lawrence Lessig

It takes money to run political campaigns. This is a cancer growing on the soul of our democracy. ~ Elizabeth Warren

This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it. ~ Bernie Sanders

Having disrupted business practices, social interactions and political campaigns, 2011 will be seen as the year that the rise of the Internet first disrupted foreign relations. ~ Douglas Alexander

As our values are the core to who we are as human beings, they are also the easiest way to identify and connect with others in meaningful ways. Think about it - most political campaigns are based around values. Barack Obama's 2008 election campaign galvanized millions of youth behind two very clear values - hope and change. ~ Adam Braun

America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish. ~ Robert Reich

The real estate interests and banks are in a kind of symbiosis. They're the largest-growing part of the economy. This is the sector that backs the political campaigns of senators, presidents and congressmen, and they use this leverage to make sure that their people dominate the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the federal housing agencies. ~ Michael Hudson

The golden rule has no place in a political campaign. ~ John James Ingalls

Political campaigns are the graveyard of real ideas and the birthplace of empty promises. ~ Teresa Heinz

Three important characteristics of propaganda are that ( l ) it is intentional and purposeful, designed to incite a particular reaction or action in the target audience; (2) it is advantageous to the propagandist or sender which is why advertising, public relations, and political campaigns are considered forms of propaganda; and (3) it is usually one-way and informational (as in a mass media campaign), as opposed to two-way and interactive communication. ~ Nancy Snow

Personal religious convictions have no place in political campaigns or in dictating public policy. ~ Geraldine Ferraro

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

Well I think money has been going into political campaigns for a very long time. ~ Carly Fiorina

One of the most ugly aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party's demand that people inform on each other routinely and denounce each other during political campaigns. This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships. Husbands and wives became guarded with each other, and parents were alienated from their children. The practice inhibited all forms of human contact, so that people no longer wanted to have friends. It also encouraged secretiveness and hypocrisy. To protect himself, a man had to keep his thoughts to himself. When he was compelled to speak, often lying was the only way to protect himself and his family. ~ Nien Cheng

In fact quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you've taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it's purpose? No it's not. It's to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It's pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices. ~ Noam Chomsky

Almost all political campaigns involve falsity and playacting. ~ Rich Lowry

The code of the National Association of Broadcasters enunciates as a cardinal principle in American radio the provision of time by stations, without charge, for the presentation of public questions of a controversial nature. At the same time, it advises against the sale of time for the presentation of controversial issues except in the case of political broadcasts during political campaigns. The basic foundation for the prohibition against the sale of time for the presentation of controversial issues is the public duty of broadcasters to present such issues, regardless of the willingness of others to pay for their presentation. If time were sold for that purpose, it would have to be sold to all with the ability to pay, and as a result the advantage in any discussion would rest largely with those having the greater financial means to buy broadcasting time. ~ Judith C. Waller

There are as many jobs for younger Americans as there are for other Americans of every age group in political campaigns. Campaigns are very labor intensive and volunteer dependent. ~ Marc Racicot

A mood of constructive criticism being upon me, I propose forthwith that the method of choosing legislators now prevailing in the United States be abandoned and that the method used in choosing juries be substituted. That is to say, I propose that the men who make our laws be chosen by chance and against their will, instead of by fraud and against the will of all the rest of us, as now...

...that the names of all the men eligible in each assembly district be put into a hat (or, if no hat can be found that is large enough, into a bathtub), and that a blind moron, preferably of tender years, be delegated to draw out one...

The advantages that this system would offer are so vast and obvious that I hesitate to venture into the banality of rehearsing them. It would in the first place, save the commonwealth the present excessive cost of elections, and make political campaigns unnecessary. It would in the second place, get rid of all the heart-burnings that now flow out of every contest at the polls, and block the reprisals and charges of fraud that now issue from the heart-burnings. It would, in the third place, fill all the State Legislatures with men of a peculiar and unprecedented cast of mind – men actually convinced that public service is a public burden, and not merely a private snap. And it would, in the fourth and most important place, completely dispose of the present degrading knee-bending and trading in votes, for nine-tenths of the legislators, hav ~ H.L. Mencken

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. ~ John W. Gardner

If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in his bid for reelection on Tuesday, it will mark the success of one of the most deeply cynical political campaigns in American history. It is hard to beat an incumbent no matter the economic climate. ~ Juan Williams

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars. ~ Noam Chomsky

I mean, in the campaign of '24 and in '28 and '32, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt insists that women have equal floor space. And this is a great victory over time. Then she wants women represented in equal numbers as men. And she wants the women to name the delegates. And the men want to name the delegates. Well, Eleanor is absolutely furious. And because they don't want her to walk away in 1924, she wins. And this is a great political victory. She has floor space equal to the men, and she has the right to name the women. ~ Blanche Wiesen Cook

The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more free speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens. ~ Timothy Snyder

The problem isn't too little money in political campaigns, but not enough. ~ Newt Gingrich

One strange quality of writing about political campaigns is that it's a little like writing about a baseball game inning by inning. We presume we can say something about the final result from the state of play a third of the way through. You can when a game is a colossal blowout, but you can't when it's close. ~ John Podhoretz

I believe in freedom of speech. And I believe that spending on political campaigns is a form of political speech that is protected under the constitution. ~ Marco Rubio

It's an intolerable abuse of power to have employees who are supposed to be advancing the public interest actually working on political campaigns. ~ Sal Albanese

The campaign website was funded by Armistead, and he personally authored the content. He was determined that the campaign's values and goals would fit on one page. The website developer, who was experienced with political campaigns, was opposed to this. He lobbied for detailed policy statements and explanations, which was the conventional approach. But Armistead disagreed. The website developer thus learned that day that core principles were more important than thousands of words of speculative verbiage. ~ Rodney Page

What is it like to be made vice-president?
On one level, it's a nearly hallucinatory degree of success. I was barely forty years old, and a shaky, sixty-three-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the entire Western world.
It was also like throwing up in convention-hall bathrooms before giving speeches, and after. It was sitting through dinners with men and women with whom I had nothing in common. Spending an enormous amount of time on trains. Promising thins and agreeing to things as advised by people I had barely met, on very little sleep. Huge sums of money were changing hands and everything happening on the grandest scale imaginable while still in most moments remaining pointless and usually outright seedy. I pretended to learn to fly-fish; I watched sporting events. In Maine I was assaulted by a lobster; it seized my lapel in a threatening manner. I tasted local foods and admired factories,farms, department stores, hotels, and (unless I'm misremembering) several empty plots of land....
It was like being given what was almost the nation's highest honor by a man you held in infinite esteem and regarded with perhaps a certain amount of terrified suspicion, a man who disliked you and clearly wanted nothing to do with you, who would scowl and change the subject at the mention of your name. And then being given a very important and very nasty job by that person, and despised for it, almost as much as you despised yourself. ~ Austin Grossman

The assumptions that propagandists are rational, in the sense that they follow their own propaganda theories in their choice of communications, and that the meanings of propagandists' communications may differ for different people reoriented the FCC* analysts from a concept of "content as shared" (Berelson would later say "manifest") to conditions that could explain the motivations of particular communicators and the interests they might serve.
The notion of "preparatory propaganda" became an especially useful key for the analysts in their effort to infer the intents of broadcasts with political content. In order to ensure popular support for planned military actions, the Axis leaders had to inform; emotionally arouse, and otherwise prepare their countrymen and women to accept those actions; the FCC analysts discovered that they could learn a great deal about the enemy's intended actions by recognizing such preparatory efforts in the domestic press and broadcasts. They were able to predict several major military and political campaigns and to assess Nazi elites' perceptions of their situation, political changes within the Nazi governing group, and shifts in relations among Axis countries.
Among the more outstanding predictions that British analysts were able to make was the date of deployment of German V weapons against Great Britain. The analysts monitored the speeches delivered by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and inferred from the content of those speeches ~ Klaus H. Krippendorff

odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens. We believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. ~ Timothy Snyder

I do think there is something to be said for those who have significant experience at state level and have run campaigns or have been deeply involved in grass roots political campaigns and who have actual hands-on experience. ~ Roy Romer

Created by writer Beau Willimon, who's worked on several political campaigns, 'House of Cards' cannily exploits the current widespread cynicism for our politics, catering to a public scorn that's warranted and also glib in the sort of cheap pox-on-both-houses way that means not having to pay attention. ~ Steve Erickson

(According to The New York Times, "the top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns." The Bush administration, in turn, increased the amount spent on contractors by roughly $200 billion between 2000 and 2006.) ~ Naomi Klein

Because the people of New Hampshire take their responsibilities as citizens of the Republic seriously, they keep it interesting for candidates who, believe it or not, can get a little tired of the mannered, predictable, and unimaginative qualities that typically afflict modern political campaigns. ~ John McCain

Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals. ~ Lucy Parsons

Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy. ~ Walter Cronkite

Since the very beginning of the Communist regime, I had carefully studied books on Marxism and pronouncements by Chinese Communist Party leaders. It seemed to me that socialism in China was still very much an experiment nad had no fixed course of development for the country had yet been decided upon. This, I thought, was why the government's policy was always changing, like a pendulum swinging from left to right and back again. When things went to extremes and problems emerged. Beijing would take corrective measures. Then these very corrective measures went too far and had to be corrected. The real difficulty was, of course, that a state-controlled economy only stifled productivity, and economic planning from Beijing ignored local conditions and killed incentive.

When a policy changed from above, the standards of values changed with it. What was right yesterday became wrong today, and visa versa. Thus the words and actions of a Communist Party official at the lower level were valid for a limited time only... The Cultural Revolution seemed to me to be a swing to the left. Sooner or later, when it had gone too far, corrective measures would be taken. The people would have a few months or a few years of respite until the next political campaign. Mao Zedong believed that political campaigns were the motivating force for progress. So I thought the Proletarian Cultural Revolution was just one of an endless series of upheavals the Chinese people must learn to put up with ~ Nien Cheng

I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns. ~ Bernie Sanders

Rationalism pervades the progressive world. It is one of the reasons progressives have lately been losing to conservatives. Rationalist-based political campaigns miss the symbolic, metaphorical, moral, emotional, and frame-based aspects of political campaigns. ~ George Lakoff

Finally, and even more seriously, I fear a return to the international climate that prevailed in the 1920s and 30s, when the United States withdrew from the global stage and countries everywhere pursued what they perceived to be their own interests without regard to larger and more enduring goals. When arguing that every age has its own Fascism, the Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi added that the critical point can be reached "not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralysing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned." If he is right (and I think he is), we have reason to be concerned by the gathering array of political and social currents buffeting us today - currents propelled by the dark underside of the technological revolution, the corroding effects of power, the American president's disrespect for truth and the widening acceptance of dehumanising insults, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism as being within the bounds of normal public debate. We are not there yet, but these feel like signposts on the road back to an era when Fascism found nourishment and individual tragedies were multiplied millions-fold. ~ Madeleine K. Albright

Paris was incredible. Everything about it for me, from spending hours eating, drinking and talking to walking through the streets ... at that time I hadn't seen that sort of political passion in the youth, and I got to experience that first hand. ~ Kate Hudson

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts. ~ Eugene McCarthy

I would hope to inspire in my listeners a feeling of freedom - of speech, thought and political activity. ~ John Hall

That it is not the people who really feel that way, but it is people who have the most money to fire up these propaganda campaigns, these like, basically these lies that they are willing to lie to the public in order to manipulate them into doing what they want. And to me it doesn't make any sense. ~ Margaret Cho

while you play bowling with one ball you will be late because untill come in that ball it's need time so you need more than one ball in order to defeat the whole army . ~ Ragir Saeed

It has sustained me in moments of success and in moments of disappointment. Without it, I'd be a different person. And without it, I doubt I'd be here today. ~ George W. Bush

The Green Shore is an engrossing novel about political oppression, played out on an intimate family scale. Bakopoulos charts the subtle, gnawing pressures of life under the Greek junta - the steady drip of daily coercion - with an exacting empathy. In particular, her depiction of love under tyranny - by turns hesitant, furtive and liberating - is as astute as it is moving, ~ Peter Ho Davies

Alliances are crucial to success in the political sphere. However, if we are to approach other organizations to propose alliances for the public good, we must be prepared to assert a far more important role for the library. We must clearly define what we do and establish and assert the relationship of libraries to basic democratic freedoms, to the fundamental humanistic principles that are central to our very way of life ... ~ Arthur Curley

When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny. ~ John Adams

Some political spouses are much more comfortable on the campaign trail than others, and they take to it a lot more naturally. ~ Monica Crowley

Political correctness is a delusional subdivision of society that believes it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the "clean end. ~ Tom Kloza

If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity: and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective, turns out to be the necessary condition of politics itself. ~ Tony Judt

As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic - full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it. ~ Wendy Brown

Sometimes people say I'm a political comedian, which, actually I'm not. I'm a comedian who sometimes discusses politics, culture - again, the word 'politics' to me is just life. ~ Janeane Garofalo

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose. ~ Russell Kirk

Democracy, taken in its narrower, purely political, sense, suffers from the fact that those in economic and political power possess the means for molding public opinion to serve their own class interests. The democratic form of government in itself does not automatically solve problems; it offers, however, a useful framework for their solution. Everything depends ultimately on the political and moral qualities of the citizenry. ~ Albert Einstein

As a minister, you shouldn't imagine you know better than the technical experts in your ministry. In the end you're there to apply the political stamp of approval. ~ Jeroen Dijsselbloem

Later, given political changes and the deterioration of the world, nobody in the government thought about either arts or letters. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In 'The General Strike,' we celebrate those who bring a new vision for the world to the table. People who stand for workers rights, human rights, a just representative political system, and a new mode of doing business where sustainability is the norm not the exception. ~ Justin Sane

It is impossible that the intention of the entrepreneur who has borrowed in order to increase investment can become effective (except in substitution for investment by other entrepreneurs which would have occurred otherwise) at a faster rate than the public decide to increase their savings ~ John Maynard Keynes

A building that has great environmental responsibility is a political animal in a way because it becomes promotional of a cause. I think that kind of advocacy through architecture is really good. ~ Antoine Predock

Lady Kingsley, when you read this, do attempt to keep an open mind."

"I will if you will," she retorted hotly.

To her surprise, he chuckled. "I daresay neither of us will. It's a pity, too, because if we could ever see our way clear to agreeing on a matter, we might accomplish a great deal of good in this world."

It infuriated her that he could pretend to care even one whit for these boys. "Now you've confused me. I'd assumed that your reason for serving on so many charitable boards was to further your political aims. Yet all the time you were merely hoping to accomplish some 'good in this world.' How very astonishing."

Just that quickly, his amusement vanished. "While I don't pretend to be as morally superior as you and your late husband, my intentions are good, no matter what you make of them. It may shock you to learn that those of us with character flaws sometimes do as much good as those of you without. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Anyway, the thing is that we need to understand that with all - frankly, with all due respect for the requirements of international law, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, a peace process is a political enterprise. And there are things that governments can do and things that they cannot do, because if you do things that leave you without political support, then you can do nothing. You can write poetry, not make peace. ~ Shlomo Ben-Ami

At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. ~ Dave Barry

I think it's always been an arrangement that had political objectives and goals, which is fine. Get married for whatever reason you want, as far as I'm concerned. ~ Rush Limbaugh

There's a lot of division in politics, and that is why I am grateful to be a part of a show like 'Veep.' It makes light of the daunting aspects of the political world. ~ Sufe Bradshaw

An intelligent man is one who is capable of taking in knowledge until the natural limits of the species are reached.. A stupid man is one whose progress is arrested at some specific time and place before then. There thus appears in psychology - and the next instant in politics - the concept of the unteachable. Some men can learn almost indefinitely; their capacity goes on increasing until their bodies begin to wear out. Others stop in childhood, even in infancy. They reach, say , the mental age of ten or twelve, and then they develop no more. Physically, they become men, and sprout beards, political delusions, and the desire to propagate their kind. But mentally they remain on the level of schoolboys. ~ H.L. Mencken

I see myself as more of a policy maker than a political leader. ~ Paul Ryan

I was kind of feeling a spiritual need all those years. My wife Geraldine and I went to an Episcopalian Church for a while. Oh, it just seemed very political to me that a guy so liberal was talking about opposing the war in Vietnam and I didn't want to hear that when I went to church. I wanted something spiritual. ~ Robert Novak

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. ~ Lester B. Pearson

President Grover Cleveland issued an executive order in 1895 regarding entrance to the Foreign Service. Potential candidates were required to pass two examinations, one written and the other oral, to measure an applicant's knowledge and understanding on a range of subjects deemed necessary for the position. The written examination included essay questions about international law, arithmetic, modern history, resources and commerce of the United States, political and commercial geography, political economy, and American history and institutions. ~ Judith L. Pearson

Wherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insi ~ Hans F. Sennholz

Do not listen to the rhetoric from campaigns, but rather, hold everyone of us accountable, hold me accountable and every other candidate accountable to be a consistent conservative. ~ Ted Cruz

Mankind is supposed to have evolved in the treetops. But I have examined my sense of balance, the prehensility of my various appendages, and my attitude toward standing on anything higher
than, say, political principles, and I have concluded that, personally, I evolved in the backseat of a car. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth
that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence
for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage. ~ Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

The vicarious responsibility for things we have not done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that the faculty of action, which, after all, is the political faculty par excellence, can be actualized only as one of the many and manifold forces of human community. ~ Hannah

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood. ~ Rick Perlstein

The three main political parties all agree the UK deficit is high and needs to be brought down. All agree that it is easier to get a deficit down if you have faster growth, cutting unemployment-related costs and raising revenues. ~ John Redwood

Tolling plan is a wonderful opportunity for political pandering, and some candidates are taking full advantage of it. ~ Robert James Thomson

Mohammed took his tribal customs and traditions and injected them into his new religion. Many of the ideas and traditions he implemented were already contained in the tribes he conquered, so in many cases, no major changes were required of his new followers. For example, most, if not all, of the tribes were polygamous. Women were seen primarily as chattel and under the complete control of their fathers or husbands. The communities of the new Islamic religion in the 600s CE often converted en masse. With minor modifications, they kept practicing their traditions. Mecca was already a major pagan religious shrine; Mohammed conveniently changed it into a place of worship and pilgrimage for Allah.
Practically speaking, Mohammed unified a fracture region under a single religion and did it with a superior military. Conquest, war, and male predominance were the hallmarks of Islam. Despite political splits over the centuries, the tribal nature of Islam remains intact. ~ Darrel Ray

The problem with the immigration debate, it's probably is the most poisoned and political debate of any issue, because you have this huge voting bloc that everybody says is yours ~ Greg Gutfeld

The Greeks who rhapsodized about democracy in their rhetoric rarely created democratic institutions. A few cities such as Athens occasionally attempted a system vaguely akin to democracy for a few years. These cities functioned as slave societies and were certainly not egalitarian or democratic in the Indian sense. ~ Jack Weatherford

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I don't ever recall having a political argument with Bob Grant. I've known him a long time. I've always liked him. ~ Mario Cuomo

People like Sean Penn, he is someone that is politically progressive and yet is still at the top of his game in the industry. So I love that he is out there just virtually shaming all the people that voted for Prop 8. He was a really great example of a straight ally, someone who used his talent and used his ability to further our cause, not just for political progressiveness but also specifically for gay marriage and specifically for Harvey Milk's entire life. ~ Margaret Cho