Quotes About Democracy And Voting

#1. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

Howard Zinn

#2. 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.

#3. 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

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#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. 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

#9. 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

#10. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

James Bovard

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?

H.L. Mencken

#20. I'm such a sap for democracy and politics that I get weepy when I see anybody voting.

Tucker Carlson

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.

Andrew Napolitano

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.

Debbie Stabenow

#33. 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

#34. Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.

Robert A. Heinlein

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Ambrose Bierce

#39. There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.

Sydney J. Harris

#40. The greatest threats to Democracy are comfort and apathy.

T. Rafael Cimino

#41. 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

#42. 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