Voting Rightd Quotes

The problem with the politicians of both parties in the US is that neither of them have a real agenda except to feather their own nests. They both have their hands deep in corporate pockets. All the rest is sleight of hand and distraction to keep the public occupied with trivia, divided against each other, and thinking their vote matters. ~ Michael Hogan

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

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance. ~ Aldous Huxley

Our elected officials are able to regulate even the most personal aspects of our lives, from the cleanliness of the air we breathe to the identity of the people we marry. Keeping this in mind, casting a ballot is not just essential - it's practical! ~ Maria Rubio

Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. ~ Benjamin Franklin

All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may earn or in any other manner receive. ~ Sinclair Lewis

It makes people feel good to say that all opinions are equal, because somehow, they correlate equality of opinions with equality of human dignity. And that's exactly where lies one of the most disgraceful and harmful perceptual errors of the society, that leads to an unfit government. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Any woman who votes for no-fault divorce is like a turkey voting for Thanksgiving. ~ Pat Robertson

Since they are our right, let us be vigilant to preserve them uninfringed, and free from encroachments. If animosities arise, and we should be obliged to resort to party, let each of us range himself on the side which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins. ~ Benjamin Franklin

If I am asked, What do you propose to substitute for universal suffrage? Practically, What have you to recommend? I answer at once, Nothing. The whole current of thought and feeling, the whole stream of human affairs, is setting with irresistible force in that direction. The old ways of living, many of which were just as bad in their time as any of our devices can be in ours, are breaking down all over Europe, and are floating this way and that like haycocks in a flood. Nor do I see why any wise man should expend much thought or trouble on trying to save their wrecks. The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god. ~ James Fitzjames Stephen

Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done. ~ Elijah Cummings

We need efforts to integrate the nation, not divide it. The 2014 elections is about voting for India. It is to decide what kind of India we want to create. So Vote for India. Neither for a person, nor for a party, let us Vote for India. ~ Narendra Modi

I don't vote. I don't do no voting. ~ Kendrick Lamar

As expected, the effect of facial competence on voting is about three times larger for information-poor and TV-prone voters than for others who are better informed and watch less television. ~ Daniel Kahneman

I had incorrectly, for all of my adult life until 2008, believed the biggest voting myth that exists - that ex-felons cannot vote. ~ Two Chainz

Many of the same people who are crying for mankind to tolerate everything have overlooked examples of intolerance that have utterly reshaped the country in which we live. For instance, what would this country be like if George Washington had tolerated British troops? Where would we be today if Thomas Jefferson had tolerated King George III? Or what if Fredrick Douglas had tolerated slavery, or Martin Luther King Jr. had tolerated segregation? What would America be like if Winston Churchill had tolerated Adolf Hitler or if Susan B. Anthony tolerated only men voting? Part of what made these individuals great was that they were strong enough to stand up for their convictions. They recognized something as "wrong," and they didn't tolerate it. ~ Brad Harrub

Those who seek to suppress voting today are either ignorant of the history or are, as I suspect is more often the case, malevolently choosing to ignore it...

To suppress the vote is to make a mockery of democracy. And those who do so are essentially acknowledging that their policies are unpopular. If you can't convince a majority of voters that your ideas are worthy, you try to limit the pool of voters. This reveals a certain irony: Many who are most vocal in championing a free, open, and dynamic economy are the same political factions that suppress these principles when it comes to the currency of ideas. ~ Dan Rather

I came to realize that this was about more than not offering up what some of his opponents craved - the picture of the angry black man, or the lectures on race that fuel a sense of grievance among white voters. Obama also didn't want to offer up gauzy words to make well-meaning white people feel better. The fact that he was a black president wasn't going to bring life back to an unarmed black kid who was shot, or alter structural inequities in housing, education, and incarceration in our states and cities. It wasn't going to change the investment of powerful interests in a system that sought to deny voting rights, or to cast people on food stamps working minimum wage jobs as "takers," incapable of making it on their own. The "last person who ever thought that Barack Obama's election was going to bring racial reconciliation and some "end of race" in America was Barack Obama. That was a white person's concept imposed upon his campaign. I know because I was once one of them, taking delight in writing words about American progress, concluding in the applause line "And that is why I can stand before you as president of the United States." But he couldn't offer up absolution for America's racial sins, or transform American society in four or eight years. ~ Ben Rhodes

As long as Florida remains a swing state, Cuban exiles in Florida will remain a very powerful voting bloc. ~ Joshua A. Tucker

Once abolish the God and the government becomes the God. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That's something I value. [Values are things like] Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. When they [Conservative right wing Republicans] talk about values, they're talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values. ~ Bill Maher

You need brains to be a great president, not to be a president. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington
regardless of who wins the Presidency. ~ James Bovard

The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. ~ Edmund Burke

The world will somehow manage to get rid of the coronavirus, most probably with extraordinary death tolls. But then guess what happens? The world will go back to its routine stupidities, namely the wars, supporting the dictators, voting for stupid politicians, destroying the forests, killing earth's climate etc.! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. ~ Noah Webster

Control is everywhere in the collective consciousness and exists in every cell in your body and every atom of every facet of the Universe. We are all in charge, and we all are directing the Universe through the collective consciousness. All the various facets or branches of personal consciousness are voting with their thoughts and beliefs to slow energy and create the physical realities. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

Texas is not really a red state - it's just a non-voting state. ~ Wendy Davis

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly. ~ Dick Gephardt

We long ago ceased expecting that a President speak his own words. We no longer expect him actually to know the answers to questions put to him. We have, in effect, come to elect newscasters-and by a similar process: not for their probity or for their intelligence, but for their "believability."

"Hope" is a very different exhortation than, for example, save, work, cooperate, sacrifice, think. It means: "Hope for the best, in a process over which you have no control." For, if one had control, if one could endorse a candidate with actual, rational programs, such a candidate demonstrably possessed of character and ability sufficient to offer reasonable chance of carrying these programs out, we might require patience or understanding, but why would we need hope?

We have seen the triumph of advertising's bluntest and most ancient tool, the unquantifiable assertion: "New" in what way? "Improved" how? "Better" than what? "Change" what in particular? "Hope" for what?

These words, seemingly of broad but actually of no particular meaning, are comforting in a way similar to the self-crafted wedding ceremony.

Whether or not a spouse is "respecting the other's space," is a matter of debate; whether or not he is being unfaithful is a matter of discernible fact. The author of his own marriage vows is like the supporter of the subjective assertion. He is voting for codependence. He neither makes nor requires an actual commitment. He'd simply like t ~ David Mamet

What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Well, when I went off to college, the guys I used to hang with were pumping gas and voting Democrat. Today they're still pumping gas and voting Democrat. Guess the Democrats didn't do much for them. ~ Charles Barkley

In real markets, agents make bad choices. They are often ignorant, misinformed, and irrational. Yet, markets tend to punish agents for making bad choices, and they tend to learn from their mistakes. For instance, if you fail to pay your bills, your credit rating declines and you have a harder time getting loans. If you fail to do research and buy an unreliable car, you suffer from repair bills. In contrast, when people in government make bad choices, the political process almost never punishes them. Studies show that voters are terrible at retrospective voting - they do not know whom to blame for bad government - and so politicians are not punished for making bad choices. ~ Jason Brennan

It's the concept of having a computer voting machine that bothers me, more so than the specific poor implementation that we have from Diebold. ~ Avi Rubin

Of course many southern whites did switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, helping the GOP become the majority party in the South, as the Democrats once were. But remember that racism declined sharply in the South during the second half of the twentieth century. There is quite literally a mountain of scholarly data that documents this. And this was the very period of GOP ascendancy. So as the South became less racist, it became more Republican. I provide evidence in this book to show that southern whites became Republican not for racist motives but for economic ones. The most racist poor whites never left the Democratic Party; they remained loyal to the party of racism until they died. In this sense, the data show that racism slowed the movement of whites toward the Republicans. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat. ~ Ben Shapiro

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

New Rule: America must stop bragging it's the greatest country on earth, and start acting like it. I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers. Infant mortality rate: America ranks forty-eighth in the world. Overall health: seventy-second. Freedom of the press: forty-fourth. Literacy: fifty-fifth. Do you realize there are twelve-year old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with?

America has done many great things. Making the New World democratic. The Marshall Plan. Curing polio. Beating Hitler. The deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag.

And sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done. Not big things. Like building a tunnel under Boston, or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines; couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting e-mail.

Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too!" Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now ~ Bill Maher

It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting. ~ Tom Stoppard

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport. ~ Dick Gregory

They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote ... As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. ~ Paul Weyrich

It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence. ~ Franklin Pierce

Don't forget to vote for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Stay home if you're voting for Dole. ~ Eleanor Mondale

Dear Black Girls and Black Women… WE matter. Our presence matters, our voices matter, and our votes matter. Make no mistake about it… WE ARE POWERFUL. We disrupt the norm and change the system for the betterment of ALL people. ~ Stephanie Lahart