Belva Lockwood Quotes

If people don't know who you are, they're not going to listen to your message. And not everybody pays attention to politicians by watching Fox News and CNN.

Communicating with the public seems to be essential, because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic

If you're trying to talk about public issues and politics and showcase it in a positive, different way, I think people like the idea.

Every Government official dreams of going directly to the people with arguments framed by that official.

To be a party you have to have a national message.

A political campaign should be an education for both the voters and the candidates.

Many complaints have reached me from the army of the advantages conferred upon the enemy by the publication of intelligence from the seat of war, not only in letters from the correspondents of the English newspapers, but in letters written by officers to their friends at home in the spirit of confidential intimacy, and which those friends send to newspapers…

Legislating should be done in a manner that is understandable to the governed.

What is a platform? An elaborate, exhaustive, minute and accurate statement of a candidate's political beliefs. Does he write it? Oh No; it is published before it is known who he will be.

Every time something has gone wrong with foreign policy, it’s been because the American people have not been involved in the process.

Parishes can help lift up the moral and human dimension of public issues, calling people to informed participation in the political process.

The political parties, or more accurately, the inner clique that controls them, select the candidates for whom the people vote. The candidates express the will of the party and not that of the people. The platforms of the contending parties are adjusted to trick the voters into balloting for their candidates.

[Commenting on Shays' Rebellion:] The way to prevent these regular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.

It’s very hard for any one person to embrace every single aspect of any one party.

I was tempted to raise this issue in the Senate several weeks ago, but I decided that I would get more attention if I could get it printed in the papers.

I am a Republican. But I am not running on the Republican platform. I'm running on my own platform. I stand for the Republicanism of Abraham Lincoln.

If the American people are going to support a policy than they had better be made to understand the rationale.

We cover Congress only when it gets to the final vote on something, too late for the public to respond.

I don’t see any problem with having proceedings televised. I think it would be good for the public.

Self government cannot work if the people do not know what their rulers are doing and why.

Party platforms are reasonable exercises but nobody pays much attention to them.

Television, with its triple advantages of sight, sound and motion, can make or break a candidate, a party or a platform. In my opinion television must not be considered as supplementary media but as the heart of your program to “win friends and influence people.

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

Here’s the role of the Republican Platform: Nobody reads it. I have been a Republican for 28 years and I have never read it.

In the democratic countries generally, the great body of citizens are refusing to wait until negotiations are over or policies are acted upon or even determined. They demand to know what is going on and to have an opportunity to express their opinions at all stages of diplomatic proceedings…. public opinion will be increasingly not merely the ultimate judge but an immediate and active force in negotiation.