John Pilger Quotes

I think the accurate description for the George W. Bush administration is a military plutocracy. Having lived and worked in the United States, I must add that I don't want to make too much of the distinction between the Bush regime and its predecessors. I don't see a great deal of difference.

Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.

Presidential election results in 2008 and 2012 clarified that talk radio was not, in fact, running the country.

The debate is ended. Fifty percent plus one vote is all we need to govern this country.

I think Donald Trump was brought to power by Americans. They voted for him.

Donald Trump will be the next president, the 45th President of the United States. And it will be up to him to set up a team that he thinks will serve him well and reflect his policies. And those who didn't vote for him have to recognize that that's how democracy works. That's how this system operates.

Politics is still the No. 1 sport in town and the scoreboard shows the U.S. attorney's office leading.

If it's a close election, then it's better for the Supreme Court to pick the president, whether or not he won the election. It's just insane on its face.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Last I looked - and I'm not a candidate - but last time I checked reading about the Constitution, the Electoral College has nothing to do with parties, has absolutely nothing to do with parties. It's most states are winners take all.

In America you elect the electoral college and they select the President. In Russia, the people select the President directly. This is more democratic.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

Why can't the Indonesians have an Islamic theocracy if they want? Why can't the Pakistanis have a military dictatorship? Why can't the Serbs run their own country the way they prefer? What is the appeal in making sure that people whose minds have been wasted by Alzheimer's Disease vote? Well, let's not beat around the bush: the appeal of mass democracy lies in the fact that in essentially every country in the world today, the number of persons unable to think for themselves is substantially larger than the number able to make independent decisions. Those unable to think for themselves have their thinking done for them by the people who control the mass media. Which is to say, democracy is the preferred system because it gives the political power to those who own or control the mass media and at the same time allows them to remain behind the scenes and evade responsibility for the way in which they use that power.

Australians find the American political system lovable but odd.

The president was not the most important political player in the 19th century. Besides Jefferson at the beginning, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the center of politics was Congress.

As we've always said, in politics the person with the biggest number wins.

We all want prosperity, but not at the expense of liberty. Poverty is not as great a danger to liberty as is wealth, with its corrupting, demoralizing influences. Let us never have a Government at Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than to the will of millions.

You know, in Russia we say there are three things you can't choose: your parents, your gender and your president.

I now say that the oldest man living never heard of the president of a great nation to come down to open electioneering for his successor. It is treating the nation as if it was the property of a single individual, and he had the right to bequeath it to whom he pleased - the same as a patch of land for which he had the patent.

Here in Brazil, the president and the vice president are elected together.

In most countries, a lopsided election represents a mandate that the winning party could then use to implement their agenda, but the U.S. political system seems to have been made to prevent such an occurrence.

You don't want to upset the people from California. They can outvote you.

The Electoral College needs to go, because it's made our society less and less democratic.

We had this little election back in 2018. And despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have one very affirmative statement to make. We won.