"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
— Winston S. Churchill

"If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote."
— David Foster Wallace (Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate)

"Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals, and to imagine that together we can do great things.

In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. "
— Caroline Kennedy

"It is useless for sheep to pass a resolution in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion."
— William Inge

"You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard)

"American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age."
— Marshall McLuhan

""If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.""
— Theodore Adorno

""If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.""
— Theodor Adorno

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.

Grover Cleveland, 1905

The heroine in my next book begs to disagree and prove old Grover's wrong.

Sarah Richmond, 2008"
— Grover Cleveland and Sarah Richmond

"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

"You know your vote doesn't count, but you go through the motions, because it's been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference."
— Marshall Karp (The Rabbit Factory)

"A man without a vote is a man without protection."
— Lyndon B. Johnson

"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

""We have no democracy, no constitution no real America
if the efficacy and sanctity of the voting process, is not fully and verifiably
protected."

"
— Ted Greenfield

"In its annual Best of Issue, readers voted me BEST AUTHOR of Pasadena in the annual Best of Issue in the Pasadena Weekly!!"
— Andre Coleman

"We must try again to be alive to what the people of our country really long for in our national life: forgiveness and grace, maturity and wisdom.

...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 (Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now)

"General Motors, General Mills, General Foods, general ignorance, general apathy, and general cussedness elect presidents and Congressmen and maintain them in power."
— Herbert M. Shelton

"Presidents are selected, not elected."
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt