Peter Jennings Quotes

Here's what I've found in Louisiana: The voters want to know what you believe, what you stand for, and what you plan to do, not what shade your skin is.

A voting record is your work product. It tells people where you stand on issues, and for better or worse it implies you're there doing what you're elected to do. It's the only litmus test available.

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of Sangamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those that support me. While acting as their representative I shall be governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have the means of knowing what their will is.

Voters go into the ballot box with big ideas in their mind: leadership, change, experience, hope.

People's analysis of why to vote with me had to do with how they felt I could handle my family.

My responsibility is to ask, 'How can I serve my ideology and my voters?'

Remember, no one decides who they're going to vote for based on the vice president. I mean that literally.

Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.

If you [as a Presidential candidate] identify a problem, you are going to be expected to have a solution.

A President has to do the image stuff that will help him so that he can do the substantive things he wants to do.

An elected executive—whether President, governor or mayor—needs a popularity majority every day in his term.

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

How many fools does it take to make up a public?

What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?

The only problem with running for office is, once you are elected you have to serve.

The Members of the Parliament shall be bound solely by their own conscience and not by any directions given by their electors.

People vote for their dreams and fears.

In our form of democracy the expression of the popular will can be effected only through the instrumentality of political parties.

Politicians must let voters know what they think about issues before the election. Judges should not.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

When nobody, or only some small fraction, feels the degree of interest in the general affairs of the State necessary to the formation of a public opinion, the electors will seldom make any use of the right of suffrage but to serve their private interest, or the interest of their locality, or of some one with whom they are connected as adherents or dependents.

Choose the politics of principle over the politics of personality.

Politics is about wanting to be loved.

I can't vote my own convictions on civil rights. If I did, I wouldn't be returned to the Senate. It's as simple as that.

The stakes they play for in politics are paper and money. The chips they play with are your life.