The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent ...business man, our leading lawyer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of h...imself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into his vote.... The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own... a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we engage in politics because we don't know anything. This is clearly revealed in the way we go about it. Our parties exist fr...om a fear of theory. The voter fears that one idea can always be contradicted by another. Therefore the parties reciprocally defend themselves against the few old ideas they have inherited. They don't live from what they promise, but from frustrating the promises of others. This is their silent community of interests.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a vo...ter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spel...ling-book. What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Peoples need a victory so bad. We've been working here since '62 and we haven't got nothing, except a helluva lot of heartaches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »