“Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.” -Gore Vidal

“Suffrage is the pivotal right.” – Susan B. Anthony

“Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.” – Maureen Reagan

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” – John F Kennedy

“Each candidate behaved well in hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for election, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

“To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” – Louis L’Amour

“An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.” – Abraham Lincoln.

“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“If the United States of America or Britain is having elections, they don’t ask for observers from Africa or from Asia. But when we have elections, they want observers.” – Nelson Mandela

“Win or lose, we go shopping after the election.” – Imelda Marcos

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” – James Bovard

“Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.” – Franklin Pierce Adams

“Thinking is not to agree or disagree. That is voting.” – Robert Frost

“An election tells how many of your supporters are alive, and a war tells how many are willing to be dead.”

“I can’t let important policy decisions hinge on the fact that an election is coming up every 90 days.” – Gerhard Schroeder

“The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying election.” – John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

“Where annual elections end, there slavery begins.” – John Quincy Adams

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues with interchangeable candidates.” - Gore Vidal

“In New York, we had primary elections for mayor. To improve their chances, all five candidates changed their name to Rudy Giuliani” –

“Elections should be held on April 16th – day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.” – Thomas Sowell

“Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?” – Robert Orben

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.” – T.S. Eliot

“The politicians were talking themselves red, white, and blue in the face.” – Clare Boothe Luce

“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” – Sydney J Harris

“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

“It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.” – Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”

“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.” – W.C. Fields

“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.” – George Jean Nathan

“There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough US congressmen.”- Unknown

“Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.” – Author Unknown

“Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.” – Robert Byrne

“Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.” – Michael Novak

“I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.” – Alexander Woollcotto

“The most important political office is that of the private citizen.” – Henry Cate, VII

“If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.” – Will Rogers

“The problem with political jokes is they get elected.” – Henry Cate, VII

“Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.” – Richard Armour

“Mankind will never see an end of trouble until . . . lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power . . . become lovers of wisdom.” – Plato

“We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.” – Stewart Udall

“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.” – Thomas Jefferson

“American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver’s license age than at voting age.” – Marshall McLuhan

“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” – James Russell Lowell

“The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The next time they give you all that civic bull . . . about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election.” – George Carlin

“The Vice-Presidency is sort of like the last cookie on the plate. Everybody insists he won't take it, but somebody always does.” – Bill Vaughn

“The vice-presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss.” - John Nance Garner, Vice-President to Franklin D Roosevelt