Mohammad Khatami Quotes

It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent.

No one went to the ballot box to vote for something worse than the status quo.

The sight of allegedly sophisticated politicians parroting complete tripe trivialises and demeans government and it has to be stopped. It's played a significant part in public disillusionment with politics and has led to the absurd situation where more people vote for 'Strictly Come Dancing' than voted in the general election.

Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties.

Don't vote for a Democrat or Republican, I have never voted for one in my life and I never will.

I really found this campaign odious. I couldn't get up for it. The quality of the candidates and the campaign, I just found the whole thing second-rate. I didn't know how to explain to my granddaughter that I was spending my dotage writing about Al Gore and George W. Bush.

I don't think that people are disinterested or uninterested in politics. I think very often they are disengaged from the formal political process. To some extent they are suspicious or even despairing of formal politics as a means to give expression and effect to what they want.

The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.

But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn't worth the trouble put in.

There are many young Americans that are very distant from our political process.

People aren't as stupid as the politicians think. More and more of us are laughing off our 'civic duty' to vote, rejecting the role of compulsory constituent.

An alienated and indecisive electorate is destructive to our democracy.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment.

Hopeless people do not vote. They don’t think that they can change anything anymore.

There's a total separation between the federal government and the people. So running for president was an attempt on my part to get people to care enough to go vote. But people just don't bother. And that's why it's not working.

One of the reasons people feel so alienated from the American political process is in the fights we get in here in Washington, no one's ever talking about them and the challenges they're going through.

Remember, I'm the guy who didn't want the referendum - I wouldn't have had it if I'd been prime minister. But you have to respect how people voted because this was partly about political alienation, so if the response to political alienation is to ignore it, that's a recipe for more political alienation.

I can't quite remember who I voted for president. It wasn't Trump or Hillary, though. I didn't like either one of them.

Millions of people feel ignored by the political establishment.

People are sick of the false choice between the established political parties who take voters for granted.

In more stable political times, a low turnout in the E.U. elections was a luxury we could afford.

Why did we lose Brexit? Why, because 60 per cent of youth didn't believe they needed to go and vote.

Well the first thing I want to say is mandate, my ass... We've been convinced that 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We're all actors in this I suppose.

People don't vote. Instinct tells them it's useless.

The elections would be free and democratic, and any result would have to be accepted.