Tony Benn Quotes

If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Abolish It

The elections are the greatest symbol of participation and political reform.

There are ways to pursue political change. In a democracy, it's through the ballot box. There are other ways, and many democracies have many different systems of democracy.

Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s.

We’ve reformed our representative democracy into the past.

We can’t change our government unless we change the people who run it.

There is nothing in our government that the ballot cannot remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts.... It can sweep over trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies and every other development of the money power.

If the voters vote for the same old thing, they are going to get the same old thing. If they want change, they are going to have to vote for change.

We all know that in democracies, some of these [necessary] reforms are unpopular.

If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.

We can change the direction of the country with our vote.

Did I end up finding a little blue pill to cure America's electoral dysfunction? Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Do not seek to find a reason why elections are not possible. Seek to make them possible, and they will be possible.

While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.

The machinery of the democratic process is really no different today from what it was 150 years ago.

Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

I have a lot of hope for the Constituent Assembly.

The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.

The right of election is the very essence of the English constitution.

For politics to change … culture must change too --- and that takes much more than dispatching troops, holding elections, and writing constitutions.