1. Politics, noun. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

- Ambrose Bierce

2. We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

- Martin L. Gross

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

- Debbie Stabenow

4. If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush’s head.

- Jim Hightower

5. Voting is as much an emotional act as it is an intellectual one.

- Monica Crowley

6. A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.

- Leo Rosten

7. The vote is precious. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society, and we must use it.

- John Lewis

8. A political convention is just not a place where you come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

- Murray Kempton

9. If I wanted to go crazy I would do it in Washington because it would not be noticed

- Irwin S. Cobb

10. We can all agree on the importance of voting.

- Jenna Bush Hagar

11. One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

- Plato

12. Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.

- Groucho Marx

13. Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

- Nikita Krushchev

14. Since a politician never believes what he says, he is quite surprised to be taken at his word.

- Charles de Gaulle

15. I think it’s about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough.

- Claire Sargent

16. Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

- Ernest Benn

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

- Robert Byrne

18. 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

19. An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

- George Eliot; Felix Holt, the Radical

20. Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

- Winston Churchill

21. A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing underneath it.

- Austin O’Malley

22. In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.

- Margaret Thatcher

23. An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.

- Albert Einstein

24. Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right.

- H.L. Mencken

25. We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.

- Kin Hubbard

26. Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

- Ronald Reagan

27. Can’t wait for tomorrow when I get to exercise my patriotic duty as an American: Complaining about how long it’s taking to vote.

- Stephen Colbert

28. Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, you coast for a while, you have a hell of a closing.

- Ronald Reagan

29. I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy: ”Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.’

- John F. Kennedy

30. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

- Winston Churchill

31. Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

- Doug Larson

32. During a campaign the air is full of speeches — and vice versa.

- Anonymous

33. The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.

- Maureen Murphy

34. In a recent fire, Bob Dole’s library burned down. Both books were lost. And he hadn’t even finished coloring one of them.

- Jack Kemp

35. Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

- Winston Churchill

36. Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

- Gore Vidal

37. My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now when people wave at me, they use all their fingers.

- Jimmy Carter

38. It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

- Al Smith

39. Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

- Will Rogers

40. How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

- Anonymous

41. I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

- Harry S. Truman

42. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

43. I don’t know whether the White House is the finest public housing in America or the crown jewel of the American penal system.

- Bill Clinton

44. I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

- Charles de Gaulle

45. Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

- Mark Twain

46. You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward.

- Michelle Obama

47. Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.

- Robert Kennedy

48. You have to be for the people to buy the people – Lincoln.

- Al Pacino, Dick Tracy

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

- Anonymous

50. Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

- George Orwell

51. Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men.

- Walter Lippmann

52. The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

53. A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

- Carl Sandburg

54. Our political leaders will know our priorities only if we tell them, again and again, and if those priorities begin to show up in the polls.

- Peggy Noonan

55. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

56. Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

- John F. Kennedy

57. The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites.’

- Larry Hardiman

58. If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

- Emma Goldman

59. Voting is not only our right – it is our power.

- Loung Ung

60. Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has a much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President.

- Barbara Boxer

61. A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

- Winston Churchill

62. Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.

- E.O. Wilson

63. Since the majority is always wrong, might we try one election day where all the losers take office?

- Robert Brault

64. Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

- Mark Twain

65. In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

- Charles de Gaulle

66. I love voting day. I love the sight of my fellow citizens lining up to make their voices heard.

- Beth Broderick

67. Being president is like running a cemetery: you’ve got a lot of people under you and nobody’s listening.

- Bill Clinton

68. So, if we lie to the government, it’s a felony. If they lie to us, it’s politics.

- Bill Murray

69. When the political columnists say ‘Every thinking man’ they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to ‘Every intelligent voter’ they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.

- Franklin P. Adams

70. As between God, country and apple pie, politicians have done the least harm in the name of apple pie.

- Robert Brault

71. When we vote, we take back our power to choose, to speak up, and to stand with those who support us and each other.

- Loung Ung

72. A promising young man should go into politics so that he can go on promising for the rest of his life.

- Robert Byrne

73. Politics — I don’t know why, but they seem to have a tendency to separate us, to keep us from one another, while nature is always and ever making efforts to bring us together.

- Sean O’Casey

74. If we don’t vote, we are ignoring history and giving away the future.

- Pat Mitchell

75. Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary.

- Douglas William Jerrold

76. In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

77. I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

- Ronald Reagan

78. The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.

- P.J. O’Rourke

79. A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

- Edward R. Murrow

80. Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?

- Robert Orben

81. 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

82. 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

83. We have the best government that money can buy!

- Mark Twain

84. If God had been a Liberal there wouldn’t have been Ten Commandments, there would have been Ten Suggestions.

- Malcolm Bradbury

85. Voting isn’t the most we can do. But it is the least.

- Gloria Steinem

86. Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.

- Don Lucchese, The Godfather, Part III

87. There is absolutely no circumstance whatever under which I would accept that spot [the Vice Presidency]. Even if they tied and gagged me, I would find a way to signal by wiggling my ears.

- Ronald Reagan

88. By voting, we add our voice to the chorus that forms opinions and the basis for actions.

- Jens Stoltenberg

89. In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

90. Statesmen tell you what is true even though it may be unpopular. Politicians will tell you what is popular, even though it may be untrue.

- Anonymous

91. Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

- Ambrose Bierce

92. Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

- John Quincy Adams

93. As far as I’m concerned, all politicians are fake people.

- Neil Sedaka

94. Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.

- Oscar Ameringer

95. 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. Johnson

96. Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

97. Democracy is not just the right to vote; it is the right to live in dignity.

- Naomi Klein

98. Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork.

- Harold Lowman

99. Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

100. Voting is a civic sacrament – the highest responsibility we have as Americans.

- Christine Pelosi

101. It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.

- George E. MacDonald

102. I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as well as building a country.

- John Ensign

103. Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

- Aristotle

104. Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen!

- Bob Edwards

105. All people are born alike — except Republicans and Democrats.

- Groucho Marx

106. Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

107. 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

108. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

109. A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law…That portion of the sovereignty, to which each individual is entitled, can never be too highly prized. It is that for which we have fought and bled.

- Alexander Hamilton

110. We are weary of politicians’ politicians. We want ours.

- Gerald Stanley Lee

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

- Clare Boothe Luce

112. 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

113. A politician thinks of the next election – a statesman of the next generation.

- James Freeman Clarke

114. Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

- Gore Vidal

115. Voting is the expression of our commitment to ourselves, one another, this country, and this world.

- Sharon Salzberg

116. Not voting is not a protest. It is a surrender.

- Keith Ellison

117. When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

- Barack Obama

118. A man without a vote is a man without protection.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

119. The ignore of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

- John F. Kennedy

120. Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.

- Anonymous

121. A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

- Theodore Roosevelt

122. The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

123. Elections belong to the people.

- Abraham Lincoln