Pat Buchanan Quotes

In America, public opinion is the leader.

Polls make leadership impossible.

Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a President or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people.

Towering over Presidents and State Governors, over Congress and State Legislatures, over conventions and the vast machinery of party, public opinion stands out in the United States, as the great source of Power.

Forget the polls and remember the people.

Very little is dependable in the politics of a going democracy except the people's conviction that one world-saver at a time is enough.

In a democracy, as a matter of course, every effort is made to seize upon and create publick opinion, which is, substantially, securing power.

Polling can undermine the ability of officials to lay out, debate, analyze, and implement their plans. By turning to instant [electronic] polls we would eliminate the captain and the officers and leave every shipboard decision to the passengers.

The public will vote if they have something important to vote for or against.

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

You know, we're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected.

Polls are not the instruments of the mob. They offer the prospect of leadership wedded to a finely calibrated measurement of opinion.

Democracy Is What You Make It!

When politicians try to govern by raising a wet finger to the wind or on the basis of public opinion polling, the public gets to think that all leaders are interchangeable.

In a Democracy, look how many … many powerful Orators there are with the people.

Opinion and protest are the life breath of democracy—even when it blows heavy.

This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Polls give candidates a method to find out what voters want.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

Public opinion is the most potent monarch this world knows.

Americans take part in political activities because they believe that by doing so they can influence government decisions

If we always looked to contemporary public opinion we would be a slaveholding British colony today.

Counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

Every single election in every country has a component of a referendum in it.

The art of leading the vulgar, in itself, does no discredit to its practitioner. Lincoln practiced it unashamed, and so did Webster, Clay, and Henry. What is more, these men practiced it with frank allowance for the naïveté of the people they presumed to lead.

Politics is about the persuasion required to move people to judgment.