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Quotes about voting

32 quotes from 26 people

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Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Sixth State of the Union Address (1874)
- Race
This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic.
George W. Bushborn 1946Comments on the storming of US Capitol (2021)
- Democracy
Suffrage once given can never be taken away, and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Conversation reported in John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant (1879), p. 362
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
Donald Trumpborn 1946Tweets on November 6 and 7, 2012, some of which were later deleted
- Democracy
Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano.
John Oliverborn 1977Last Week Tonight (2014–present), On Brexit.
- Clever Jabs
- Politics
I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.
Donald Trumpborn 1946Speech at campaign rally (23 January 2016), Sioux Center, Iowa.
- Politics
In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956“Sham Battle”, Baltimore Evening Sun (26 October 1936); repr. A Carnival of Buncombe (1956), p. 325
- Government
This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)
The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Woodrow Wilson: “7th Annual Message”, December 2, 1919
- America
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. Washington1856–1915“The Problems of the Colored Race in the South,” lecture, Hamilton Club, Chicago (10 December 1895)
- Laws
It is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.
Mike Penceborn 1959Official statement prior to engaging in his role in the counting of the votes of the Electoral College (6 January 2021)
- Democracy
There’s something more powerful than bombs, and that’s your vote. People must vote!
Robert De Niroborn 1943Catherine Shoad, “Robert De Niro: ‘Votes are more powerful than bombs’”, The Guardian, (October 26, 2018)
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Civil Disobedience (1849)In context
- Morality
Presidents and Congresses, laws and lawsuits can open the doors to the polling places and open the doors to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot. But only the individual Negro, and all others who have been denied the right to vote, can really walk through those doors, and can use that right, and can transform the vote into an instrument of justice and fulfillment.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Remarks on signing the Voting Rights Act (6 August 1965)
- Race
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973We Shall Overcome (1965)
- America