Voting Quotes: 17 Of The Funniest, Smartest, Wildest Statements About Voting (PHOTOS)

Voting quotes on election day: they're either hilarious or depressing, as great minds have weighed in over the centuries speculating on whether you should bother getting to your polling place or not.

Here are some of our favorites by the powerful and intelligent. Have a favorite we missed? Let us know about it.

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Gore Vidal

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

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

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Comments

[Richard Pearce]

12:06 PM on 11/09/2010

For some insight into why the US is in the troubles it is watch the British documentary 'The Power of Nightmares: The Politics of Fear', and as you do, remember that people fear being made poor and being told that what they want to do is bad for others almost as much as they fear violence.
 
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares
 
To paraphrase 'The biggest thing we have to fear is those who say they will protect us from our fears'

[Richard Pearce]

11:54 AM on 11/09/2010

"Voting is the only activity where an illiterate, uninformed person saying 'me, too' is considered the equal of a well-read, well-informed person elequently saying 'this is what I believe'."
(Richard Pearce)

[Tremonius]

07:26 PM on 11/04/2010

"Politics is like parenting in that what you have to so to win the job by no means qualifies you to perform it."

[Richard Pearce]

11:58 AM on 11/09/2010

Especially apt seeing as winning the first seems to involve doing exactly what is done to win the second, only to a different part of the body.

[Dr Carol LaBra]

02:03 AM on 11/03/2010

! agree with the blogger but my prior 4 replies have not been allowed to be posted by the censors. Does anyone know why they are so terrified of an open expression of ideas or why they are paid so much or volunteer to keep freedom of speech from being practiced? For the repression of statements that agree with what has already been said is almost as dangerous as stifling dissent and asserting everything is wonderful.

[relevancematters]

12:28 PM on 11/03/2010

I have just recently realized that a lot of my stuff is being moderated out of existence, too! Amazing, considering the number of "FU--no, FU!" conversations that go on around here. Daily Kos had an article a couple of days ago that suggested that Ariana has other purposes here than intelligent discourse, though....

I do love these quotes! Long ago, when I was young, I didn't vote (which--gosh!--may be why George McGovern was never president, huh?). Then GW Bush and his brownshirts scared the hell out of me and I got very political. I can't take it anymore, though--I think I'll go back to admitting my vote means absolutely nothing.

[Dr Carol LaBra]

11:53 PM on 11/03/2010

Swearing, obscenities, blasphemies even advocating out right hatred is never a cause for something to be deleted on the Internet. If it is cloaked in polite & acceptable hatred and even more so if it agrees with the censors idea of what is ¨politically correct¨ which is always and forever behind the Nirvana that more enlightened beings are trying to take humanity regardless of how insane they appear to the masses. For nothing much has really changed since Galileo tried to help us see the greater beauty of a much more wondrous universe than of believing mistakenly...that we are at the center of it all.

And in the oligarchy of the Earth composed of 6,000,000,000 plus egos it is very difficult to see how ones ¨vote¨ would have any effect on anything save for one of letting one know how truly impotent one is to try to change something using that method alone. After all, ALL politicians only reflect where true leaders(such as a Martin Luther King, a Gandhi, or a Thoreau or others) have dragged humanity kicking and screaming trying to get us to go some place better. And such beings are always vilified as criminals while they are alive and deified in their death by the very same people who would advocate their silencing if they were alive today.

And CONGRATULATIONS for having so many posts moderated out of existence because you obviously must have a lot more to say...than they want to get through.

[mattwg440]

01:27 AM on 11/03/2010

Gosh I miss hunter , I need him at my young age.

David sedaris is disarmingly hilarious.

[Truthseeker55]

11:52 PM on 11/02/2010

"A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil." - Me

[Ryhunt86]

05:10 PM on 11/04/2010

You, and a few others

[doyougetit]

11:49 PM on 11/02/2010

Emma Goldman's quote says it all, democracy is a great idea, however with companies buying politicians, and politicians lying about when I get in office this will happen. As soon as money got involved democracy became a completely broken system.

[mlaiuppa]

11:45 PM on 11/02/2010

Winston Churchill: Democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else.

[foxisms]

11:37 PM on 11/02/2010

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
And if NOT voting could change anything it would be made illegal as well.

[cirrus7]

11:30 PM on 11/02/2010

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
Here in Illinois, Sgt. Stedenko and Company just made that synthetic marijuana substitute of perfectly legal herbs + chemicals now a friggin felony.
They clearly stated that the ONLY reason was because people can get high off it.

[AndyWright68]

11:18 PM on 11/02/2010

Voting, a suggestion box for slaves.

[foxisms]

11:39 PM on 11/02/2010

Or put another way,
"Democracy is voluntary imprisonment disguised as freedom."

[AndyWright68]

12:15 AM on 11/03/2010

F&F

[ratpick]

11:16 PM on 11/02/2010

David Sedaris rocks.

[c-tom]

11:16 PM on 11/02/2010

Wouldn't this post be better without the pretty pictures? It would certainly make for a quicker read.

[JoeLeland]

10:59 PM on 11/02/2010

" I never vote for anything, I vote against it " W.C. Fields.

[b1986]

09:59 PM on 11/02/2010

Churchill wasn't only correct in his statement, but also revealed what people in the political class think of the average voter. It's kind of scary really. My mind goes back to the documentary, "Capitalism, A Love Story" in the scene with the Citi Bank document where it said the US isn't a democracy.

[JoeLeland]

11:02 PM on 11/02/2010

Because the U.S. is not a Democracy we are a Constitutional Republic.
A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what' for supper.
MSM and the public school system have been teaching citizen that we are a democracy, we are not and that is a good thing y'all.

[punctuateddisequilibrium]

12:43 PM on 11/04/2010

Actually, you are only partly correct. The original Constitution established a republic, but of a modified sort that included voting to select people to represent the people's interests and a stated intent toward government by the people, for the people, and of the people. That Constitution was amended to broaden the franchise toward not away from democracy, but democracy within the deliberative framework of of a republic of three branches of government, all of which, however, are to serve the people's interests. Your definition of democracy is facile and, ultimately, silly, precisely because it doesn't scale. When elections are decided by who has the biggest purse, not only is democracy in danger but even more so the republic When the Founders created the checks and balances, they were not thinking about bank drafts and deposits. And THAT is a good thing ya'll.