#elections

This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#british-people #clement-attlee #elections #india #indian-independence-act-

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. ↗

— Thomas L. Friedman

#democracy-fascism #democracy-freedom #democracy-voting #democrats #elections

The Iraqi elections were an important first step. ↗

— Brent Scowcroft

#first #first step #important #iraqi #step

Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones. ↗

— Gene Sharp

#elections #business

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#hg #want

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#democracy #elections #voters #character

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. ↗

— Matt Taibbi

#democracy #elections #government #greed #wall-street

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it. ↗

— Thucydides

#elections #fairness #losing #office #democracy

When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. ↗

— Euripides

#deceit #deception #elections #evil #false-promises

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation ↗

— Hillary Rodham Clinton

#politics #statesmen #elections