Neil Postman Quotes

Voting is the next-to-last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge, of course, is giving your opinion to a pollster.

Going back to why people don't vote, I presume the main reason is because they understand without reading political science texts that it doesn't make any difference how they vote. It's not going to affect policy, so why bother?

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

Although elections are not perfect tools for democracy, they reinforce the relationship between the people and their leaders, empowering citizens to remove and replace their governments in a peaceful and orderly manner. The only basis for a peaceful society is providing people with the opportunity to express their opinions and their will, and elections are instrumental in doing so.

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

The trouble with modern democracy is that men do not approach to leadership until they have lost the desire to lead anyone.

I think you have to [vote] and the reason you have to go vote is an important one, and that is because the day you vote is the day that you will feel the most ineffectual you will feel all year.

I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree of enthusiasm.

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

There were a number of referendums in '98 that most of the things I voted for passed. That's very satisfying when you feel that most of the country is in step with your views.

Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.

Why do the people humiliate themselves by voting? I didn't vote because I have dignity. If I had closed my nose and voted for one of them, I would spit on my own face.

As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.

To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

I don't vote. I don't do no voting.

Voting is a civic sacrament.

Your vote will give the government a legitimacy it does not deserve.

Why do we want dumb votes?

The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: T'is but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Voting is the first duty of democracy.

A growing number of people in this country do not believe that it makes a real difference who is elected President of the United States.

In Russia we are not fighting to win elections. We are fighting to have elections.