Germaine Greer Quotes

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

Although elections are not perfect tools for democracy, they reinforce the relationship between the people and their leaders, empowering citizens to remove and replace their governments in a peaceful and orderly manner. The only basis for a peaceful society is providing people with the opportunity to express their opinions and their will, and elections are instrumental in doing so.

Voters do not decide issues. They decide who will decide issues.

I feel like this idea of strategic voting has not allowed people to dream big.

Millions of people walk into the voting booth and vote for someone they like.

Voting is the next-to-last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge, of course, is giving your opinion to a pollster.

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.

I ran because I became convinced after King was shot and killed, and Martin Luther King was one of the great heroes of my life, that politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. If we don't like how we live, we can participate in the perfect most revolutionary act in a democracy, it's called voting.

The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself...The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.

We do have some people that have never voted before.

In the United States, if 43 percent of eligible voters do not vote, then democracy is weakened.

An election is an opportunity for a new consensus.

Elections have a way of cooling passions, especially when voters get what they want.

Take it from me: Elections matter.

A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.

All the more reason we need to stand up for our democracy now. If we're going to solve the crises that are barreling down on us, we need democracy, and our democracy needs to start with an open and inclusive debate. That doesn't mean 20 candidates. There are four candidates who are on the ballot for just about every voter in America.

Where is democratic process or popular sovereignty for the endangered population? It cannot be "given" or "allocated" by some other power without that same power claiming the right to withdraw what it gives.

We know we only have about half of our population that's voting.

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

Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.

I am logically in favour of a referendum. It would be the only legitimate way.

Oftentimes people get it wrong when they say we need to educate voters first and then give them power. I tend to favor giving them power first.

In America, one of our challenges, historically, is that we have very low voting rates, even during presidential elections.

We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.