Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

- Will Rogers

We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

- Kin Hubbard

If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates.

- Howard Zinn

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.

- W. C. Fields

The politicians were talking themselves red, white and blue in the face.

- Clare Boothe Luce

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

Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.

- Daniel Webster

A man that'd expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic; but a man that thinks men can be tur-rned into angels by an iliction is called a rayformer an' remains at large.

- Finley Peter Dunne

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

- Robert Byrne

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

- John Gardner

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.

- Adlai Stevenson

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country -- and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

- Charles Krauthammer

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 politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.

- James Freeman Clarke

I'll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

- George H. W. Bush

I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election.

- Walt Whitman



Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

- Jim Hightower



The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.

- Edward R. Murrow



People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

- Otto von Bismarck



The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world.

- Howard Zinn



Presidental nominations and elections are more democratic than monarchical rule or the procedures of totalitarian states, but they are far from some reasonable expectation of democracy. The two major parties have a monopoly of presidential power, taking turns in the White House. The candidates of minority parties don't have a chance. They do not have access to the financial backing of the major parties, and there is not the semblance of equal attention in the mass media; it is only the two major candidates who have free access to prime time on national television.

- Howard Zinn



In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

- Barack Obama



Those who vote decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything.

- Joseph Stalin



A three-year diet of rubber chicken and occasional crow.

- Charles Krauthammer



July does not a November election make.

- Ann Richards



We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

- Lyndon B. Johnson



Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.

- Lillian Hellman



Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

- Dick Gregory



Elections are a good deal like marriages. There's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with public officials.

- Will Rogers



No part of the education of a politician is more indispensable than the fighting of elections.

- Winston Churchill



Vote for the man who promises least. He'll be the least disappointing.

- Bernard Baruch



Then there's politics. Just imagine politics with its dumbbell element subtracted. There would be no Republican candidates. There would be no Democratic voters. The whole system would collapse.

- P. J. O'Rourke



Our elections are free - it's in the results where eventually we pay.

- Bill Stern



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



Look, Congress has allocated more money to finance the upcoming Iraqi elections than it has for the American elections. There's something wrong with that.

- Donna Brazile



Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

- Gore Vidal



The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win.

- Leonid Brezhnev



Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

- Barbara Kingsolver



An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods.

- Ambrose Bierce



The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

- Lord Acton



A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.

- Adlai Stevenson



Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

- Herbert Marcuse



In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

- P. J. O'Rourke



Where annual elections end, there slavery begins.

- John Adams



Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

- George Bernard Shaw