Famously Said Random quote

Topics/Government

Quotes about voting

32 quotes from 26 people

Most readBy personPage 2 of 3

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
A people divided over the right to vote can never build a Nation united.
Lyndon B. Johnson1908–1973Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)
- America
It’s going to be the ballot or the bullet.
Malcolm X1925–1965“The Ballot or the Bullet” speech (1964)
- Guns
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks (1956)
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
Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano.
John Oliverborn 1977Last Week Tonight (2014–present), On Brexit.
- Clever Jabs
- Politics
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
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
ASArt Spander
- Democracy
The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
Joseph Stalin1878–1953
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
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
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
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
BVBill Vaughan1915–1977
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“Gods and Greens” (1989)
- Democracy