Top 100 Ballot Quotes
#1. The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with.
Rose Schneiderman
#2. If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don't think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.
Elliott Abrams
#3. In the view of everyone, I am a viable candidate and I should be on the ballot.
John McCain
#4. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, if your standard-bearer for the presidency is not doing well, it's gonna reflect on the down-ballot.
Tommy Thompson
#5. I'm afraid, is that there are a number of groups who really don't want a fair-minded judge who has an openness to both sides of the argument. Rather, they want judges who will impose their liberal agenda on the American people; views so liberal that they cannot prevail at the ballot box.
John Cornyn
#6. In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.
Robert Caro
#7. Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.
Booker T. Washington
#8. That's what my Dad always told me, on the ballot, they should always have a third choice, like none of the above, then if enough people picked that, they'd have to get new candidates.
Meg White
#9. I know enough about European politics to know you've got a lot of crazy people who make their way onto the ballot.
Karl Rove
#10. Politics has become a blood sport that goes beyond just the person whose name is on the ballot.
Paul Ryan
#11. These ballot initiatives remind us that America is the land where people are free to dream whatever they want, so long as that dream doesn't make Midwesterners feel icky!
Lewis Black
#12. If I can get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states and be allowed into the debates, I'd not only run, I'd win.
Jesse Ventura
#13. You're not going to get a chance to vote for me on the ballot, but you can actually vote for what I believe in.
Carl Lewis
#14. If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government ... The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure.
Calvin Coolidge
#15. In America, freedom and justice have always come from the ballot box, the jury box, and when that fails, the cartridge box.
Steve Symms
#16. The power of the ballot we need in sheer defense,
else what shall save us from a second slavery?
W.E.B. Du Bois
#17. First off there is no question that LaDainian is a first-ballot Hall of Famer. His contributions off the field to the community of San Diego are as important as what he did on the field. What he did on the field was monumental.
Dan Fouts
#18. It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj
#19. When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law?
Benjamin Harrison
#20. If I put myself on the ballot and even 50 people voted for me, it'd be a travesty.
Al Franken
#22. People are even more wary of politicians and they are realizing that democracy isn't just about putting a cross on a ballot every four years, it's about deciding what you want and fighting for it.
Mark Thomas
#23. Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that's not on the ballot.
Russell Brand
#24. I didn't call for a ballot at the start of the miners' strike in 1984. I'll regret that until my dying day.
Neil Kinnock
#25. A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.
Herbert Hoover
#26. The most famous case was the so-called Bradley effect: in 1982, California voters told exit pollsters they had elected a black governor, Tom Bradley, by a significant margin, but in the privacy of the ballot box they had actually given his white opponent a narrow victory.
Anonymous
#27. Socialism in America will come through the ballot box.
Gus Hall
#28. The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box.
Wesley Clark
#29. In the United States, you might say every county has got its own separate system. There's not even one kind of ballot that you use all over the United States. We require that in a foreign country.
Jimmy Carter
#30. It is easier for a political party to attain national ballot status in Russia today than it is for the Libertarian party or the Green party to get on the ballot in, say, Pennsylvania.
Justin Raimondo
#31. Through the ballot, we can defend our democracy from the threat of dictatorship,
Joseph Estrada
#32. Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual?
Benjamin Tucker
#35. The best hope for Australia is the ballot box and good education.
John Monash
#36. A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
Frederick Douglass
#37. If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work - because if they don't, they won't be around the next time the ballot box is open.
Abdallah II Of Jordan
#38. Our 'pathway' is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#39. I vote because it's what small-d democracy is about. Because there are places where people fight for generations and stand for hours to cast a ballot knowing what we ought to remember: that it makes a difference. Not always a big difference. Not always an immediate difference. But a difference.
Ellen Goodman
#40. I have come to see more and more that one of the most decisive steps that the Negro can take is that little walk to the voting booth. That is an important step. We've got to gain the ballot, and through that gain, political power.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#41. It'll be the ballot or the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death
Malcolm X
#42. I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simplymore voters, but better voters.
Frances Harper
#43. When I'm up for an award, there are usually two or three other things on the ballot that I like better than my own fiction.
Kelly Link
#44. If power lies more and more in the hands of corporations rather than governments, the most effective way to be political is not to cast one's vote at the ballot box, but to do so at the supermarket or at a shareholders' meeting. When provoked, corporations respond.
Noreena Hertz
#45. [On her wearing pants:] The greatest sorrows from which women suffer today are those physical, moral and mental ones, that are caused by their unhygienic manner of dressing! The want of the ballot is but a toy by comparison.
Mary Edwards Walker
#46. There are ways to pursue political change. In a democracy, it's through the ballot box. There are other ways, and many democracies have many different systems of democracy.
Richard Armitage
#48. My view is that discrimination against anyone at the ballot box is wrong and should have the full enforcement of the federal government.
Barack Obama
#49. The closer a Negro got to the ballot box, the more he looked like a rapist.
E. Franklin Frazier
#50. Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands ...
Booker T. Washington
#51. What a rush it was to plunge into the bin of official decision and cast a ballot in favor of FUN.
Wavy Gravy
#52. My generation, we really have to step up to the plate and vote. Tweeting is great - people say, 'Oh, I don't want this or that' - but at the end of the day, tweeting isn't a ballot. Just saying that you don't like someone on Twitter is not going to turn a state blue or red. You have to vote.
Zendaya
#53. Perhaps the fact that I am not a Radical or a believer in the all powerful ballot for women to right her wrongs and that I do notscorn womanly duties, but claim it as a privilege to clean up and sort of supervise the room and sew things, etc., is winning me stronger allies than anything else.
Ellen Swallow Richards
#54. It'll be the ballot or it'll be the bullet. It'll be liberty or it'll be death. And if you're not ready to pay that price don't use the word freedom in your vocabulary.
Malcolm X
#55. It's not opinion polls that determine the outcome of elections, it's votes in ballot boxes.
Nicola Sturgeon
#56. Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln
#57. The mood, it is fair to say, was reasonably tense. As a result of the conclusion of the ballot, most members are happy that this matter has now been determined.
Chris Hayes
#58. Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics.
Neil Kinnock
#59. Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce
#60. I give nightly praise to my Maker that I never cast a ballot to bring that lazy, disreputable, ill-tempered beast into what was once my home. I'm glad that I had the courage to go on record as opposing that illegitimate, shameless flea-bag that now shares my bed and board. You abstainer, you!
Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.
#61. Some people think [Ted] Cruz is just as bad of an electoral nightmare down the ballot as [Donald] Trump.
Dalia Mogahed
#62. I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman.
Susan B. Anthony
#63. Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.
Ambrose Bierce
#64. The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.
Lysander Spooner
#65. Politicians know that if they fail to engage with the gay community, and fail to develop coherent positions on the issues that concern them, they risk punishment at the ballot box. If we can do that for science, we will have made an outstanding start.
Mark Henderson
#66. It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.
Tony Benn
#67. Our goal is to get sport hunting in the same category as **** fighting and dog fighting. We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States.
Wayne Pacelle
#68. It seems to me that actual democracy is where all of us get to participate and it's not just a sort of a blunt little dry hump in a ballot box, but an actual penetrative process.
Russell Brand
#69. The best way to marginalize the Muslim Brotherhood [in Egypt] is in the ballot box, not through arrests and killing people.
Kelly Ayotte
#70. Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.
Sarah Vowell
#71. If the guy in front of you at the polls has arm swords, you might want to considering filling out an absentee ballot.
Jon Stewart
#72. South Australia was the first community to give the secret ballot for political elections.
Catherine Helen Spence
#73. If you had found the right candidate in 2000 or 2004, and you could have put that man or woman, given them ballot access in September of the election year, they could have won the election.
Hamilton Jordan
#74. There are many hands touching ballots after a voter drops his ballot into the ballot box. There is no guarantee of ballot secrecy for anyone, which makes the whole system vulnerable to intimidation and bribery.
Bob Schaffer
#75. Vote counting and ballot collecting does not occur in the light of day. There are too many occasions when observers and opposing parties lose contact with the ballots.
Bob Schaffer
#76. We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases.
Glenn Hubbard
#77. It may be conjectured that it is cheaper in the long run to lift men up than to hold them down, and that the ballot in their hands is less dangerous to society than a sense of wrong is in their heads.
James Russell Lowell
#78. Behind the screen of the ballot, the real holders of power ... are the great industrial and monetary monopolies who own our national economic life.
Florence Luscomb
#79. I'm not going to reduce the choices of Canadians at the ballot box by backroom deals or secret arrangements. I think that's a cause for cynicism more than anything else.
Justin Trudeau
#80. I have consistently made it very clear that I will vote a straight Democratic ticket, just like I do every election. From the local Constable to the President, I will be voting for every Democrat on the ballot.
Henry Cuellar
#81. It's not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It's the hand that casts the ballot.
Harry S. Truman
#82. If it went on the ballot in Colorado, I would vote to lower the drinking age.
Pete Coors
#83. I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.
Elif Safak
#84. Andrea Leadsom promises to publish tax return tomorrow if she gets on ballot - it's boring.
Laura Kuenssberg
#86. You know, we had the elections earlier in the week, and a dead woman, in Pennsylvania, somehow was on the ballot and she was elected to city council. A dead woman actually elected! And I'm thinking, well, I guess there is still hope for Al Gore.
David Letterman
#87. If you censor yourself, if you cannot articulate your needs, if you cannot articulate your priorities, then whatever you do, putting a little cross in a ballot box, etc, does not represent your view. It is an act of desperation.
Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
#88. Liberals attempt through judicial activism what they cannot win at the ballot box.
Rush Limbaugh
#89. Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box.
Lydia M. Child
#90. To imply that religious believers have no right to engage moral questions in the public square or at the ballot is simply to establish a Reichian secularism as our state faith.
Maggie Gallagher
#91. I therefore shared fully the intense chagrin of the New York and other State delegations when, on the third ballot, Abraham Lincoln received a larger vote than Seward.
Henry Villard
#92. One of the nuisances of the ballot is that when the oracle has spoken you never know what it means.
Lord Salisbury
#93. The Southern Progress Fund will bring much-needed resources into multiple Southern states where Democrats must identify up-and-coming leaders and build a bench of strong potential candidates up and down the ballot.
Ronnie Musgrove
#94. Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.
George Soros
#96. People know what happened in California, and they know it can happen again and again. They know that no group has passed more ballot measures than we have. They know we have a focused strategy. They know we have a budget of $150 million a year. And they know we're ready for a fight.
Wayne Pacelle
#97. Freedom cannot be won by the sword, or held by the ballot. It exists only in the minds of men.
Paul Guildea
#98. I couldn't help but think about Election Day one year before and everything that had happened since. Last Election Day, not only had the country reelected the first president who had stood for marriage equality, but we'd also won ballot fights on marriage in four
Marc Solomon
#99. Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.
Walter Bagehot
#100. If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose.
Peter Singer
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