Top 78 Democracy Voting Quotes
#1. 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
#2. The mere machinery of voting is not democracy, though at present it is not easy to effect any simpler democratic method. But
G.K. Chesterton
#3. We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.
G.K. Chesterton
#4. I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
Leo Szilard
#5. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. Mencken
#6. The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
Thomas Sowell
#7. 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
#8. They say the crazies come out at night. I say the crazies come out during election year: Elections have the power to turn once seemingly normal people into certified loonies.
Criss Jami
#9. Voters thereby prove themselves bad and indeed corrupt judges of such issues and often they even prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
#11. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
James Bovard
#13. That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.
Robert Musil
#14. You gotta remember the smartest thing the Congress did was to limit the voters in this country. Out of 3 1/2 to 4 million people, 200,000 voted. And that was true for a helluva long time, and the republic would have never survived if all the dummies had voted along with the intelligent people.
Richard Nixon
#15. Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself.
Mimi Kennedy
#17. American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world, and it no longer is. Citizens cannot be guaranteed that they can walk into a voting booth with any assurance that their vote will be counted.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#18. Democracy is not just voting every 5 years and watching 'Big Brother' in between and wondering why nothing happens. Democracy is what we do and say where we live and work
Tony Benn
#19. In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies.
Gary Hamel
#20. In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler's increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.
Paul Lafargue
#21. Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy.
Dick Gephardt
#22. On my travels around the world, I've met people in countries where democracy doesn't exist and if it does, they are intimidated into voting in a certain way.
Ross Kemp
#23. If voting doesn't change anything, it is just a drama of democracy.
Shesh Nath Vernwal
#24. I'm such a sap for democracy and politics that I get weepy when I see anybody voting.
Tucker Carlson
#25. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston S. Churchill
#26. What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?
H.L. Mencken
#27. The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.
Charles Bukowski
#28. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was indeed a vital instrument of democracy, ensuring the integrity and reliability of a democratic process that we as a Country hold so dear.
Charles B. Rangel
#29. When the evidence for and against "democracy being the finest system of government yet invented" is weighed, George W Bush is going to tip the scales very heavily against.
Andre The BFG
#30. I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines.
Eddie Vedder
#31. It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard
#32. When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.
DeForest Soaries
#33. Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.
Sara Sheridan
#34. 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
#35. Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong ... This [is] mostly BS.
Jeffrey A. Miller
#36. Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.
Howard Rheingold
#37. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.
Howard Zinn
#38. The capacity for talking together constituted the foundation for democracy, far more fundamental than voting. As one ancient Greek philosopher noted, "When voting started, democracy ended.
William Isaacs
#39. President Bush announced tonight that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have a free and fair voting. Iraq? We can't even get this in Florida.
Jay Leno
#40. Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.
Andrew Napolitano
#42. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
Benjamin Franklin
#43. Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.
Debbie Stabenow
#44. The changes that take place when liberal Democrats replace not so liberal or compassionate Republicans (or Democrats) are merely cosmetic.
David T. Dellinger
#45. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H.L. Mencken
#46. Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
Abraham Lincoln
#47. Voting on things is democratic, yes - but not on deciding on whether or not people should be equal or have human rights. That isn't democracy, it is mob rule.
Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy.
Christina Engela
#48. Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]
Noam Chomsky
#49. The Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented.
George Seldes
#50. Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
Henry Rollins
#51. Indeed, when all parties campaign effectively the overall effect is to push up voting rates, as you see in tight marginal seats or close general elections. That must be good for democracy.
Lucy Powell
#52. Vote? What's so fun about voting? You should never vote, everyone knows that. If you vote and your guy wins you can't later complain because you helped put him there. That's why I never vote, so I can later complain.
Sergio De La Pava
#53. Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.
Giuseppe Prezzolini
#54. In democracy, our most important tool is to vote. But our power tool is when we have the power to influence others on who to vote for.
Ben Tolosa
#55. Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
Isaac Asimov
#56. Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.
Arlen Specter
#57. Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. That's democracy.
Dmitry Medvedev
#58. Voting in particular is an embarrassment, being a public display of weak character and low intelligence. Let us face the truth: Democracy, like spitting in public or the Roman games, is the proper activity of the lower intellectual and moral classes. It amounts to collusion in one's own suckering.
Fred Reed
#59. A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan
#61. Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.
Naomi Klein
#62. The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#63. We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.
Walter Cronkite
#64. Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy.
Jay Griffiths
#65. All my years campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. Still, I realize this fully only by looking back.
Gloria Steinem
#67. There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
Sydney J. Harris
#68. Good intentions are ubiquitous in politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs.
Bryan Caplan
#69. Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Ambrose Bierce
#70. At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.
Winston Churchill
#71. Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.
Jane Bowles
#72. The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush's belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.
John Ensign
#74. Just because a group does not take its decisions by voting does not mean they have no understanding of the essence of democracy.
George Ayittey
#75. If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Mark Twain
#76. Voting isn't the most we can do, but the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one.
Gloria Steinem
#77. We don't vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them.
Charles M. Blow
#78. Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.
Bill Moyers
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