There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign. — Theodore White
I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency. I anticipate criticism; but however unfavorable I trust that my sincerity will not be called into question. — Victoria Woodhull
In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history. — Mark Shields
Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes. — John Podhoretz
I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo. — Shirley Chisholm
Donald Trump came out as a birther, which is Republican for, 'I'm running for president.' — Lewis Black
I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Campaigning in Wyoming is politics at its most retail level. It's done one voter at a time. — Mary Cheney
Like NASCAR race drivers or PGA golfers, why not require each of the [US presidential] candidates to cover their clothing, briefcases and staff with the logo patches of their corporate sponsors? — Jim Hightower
Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury. — John Oliver
The party of swindlers and thieves is putting forward its chief swindler and its chief thief for the presidency. We must vote against him, struggle against him. — Alexei Navalny
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. — Adlai E. Stevenson
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal -- that you can gather votes like box tops -- is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. — Adlai Stevenson
The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is - and I mean this seriously - the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been. — Fidel Castro
No presidential candidate should visit Las Vegas without condemning organized gambling. — Ralph Nader
Short Presidential Campaign Quotes
The election is not a time to discuss serious issues. — Kim Campbell
In the scheme of our national government, the presidency is preeminently the people's office. — Grover Cleveland
Any man who wants to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods. — H. L. Mencken
When I ran for governor of Minnesota, I only raised $300,000. — Jesse Ventura
Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all. — Thomas More
Campaign Quotes
What my campaign is about is a political revolution - millions of people standing up and saying, enough is enough. Our government belongs to all of us, and not just the hand full of billionaires. — Bernie Sanders
My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay. — Alexander The Great
It was clear to me that if we allowed the Freedom Ride to stop at that point, just after so much violence had been inflicted, the message would have been sent that all you have to do to stop a nonviolent campaign is inflict massive violence. — Diane Nash
The whole secret of the campaigns unleashed against Spain can be explained in two words: Masonry and Communism... we have to extirpate these two evils from our land. — Francisco Franco
Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. — Lyndon B. Johnson
I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. — Ronald Reagan
I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. — Donald Trump
The debates are part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become a format that defies meaningful discourse. They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process. — Walter Cronkite
The British Red Cross asked me to help them spearhead a fundraising campaign for the victims of the war in Nicaragua. It was a turning point in my life. It began my commitment to justice and human rights issues. — Bianca Jagger
Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death. — Genghis Khan
Election Campaign Quotes
Unfortunately, money in politics is an insidious thing - and a loophole in our campaign finance system was taken advantage of with money going to existing or new 527 groups with the sole purpose of influencing the election. — Olympia Snowe
I campaigned in 2012 all over this country for months: 'Repeal and replace Obamacare.' That was not the mandate of the voters. If they wanted to repeal Obamacare, the 2012 election would have been probably significantly different. — John McCain
You don't defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. — Stephen Harper
If I take donations from Big Corporates to fund our election campaign, I'll be accountable to them and would have to do what they tell me to do after winning elections. But if I take donations from common people to fund our Election Campaign, after winning, I'll be accountable to them — Arvind Kejriwal
The problem with every American candidate regarding the presidency, I am not talking only about this campaign or elections, but generally, that they say something during the campaign and they do the opposite after the campaign. — Bashar al-Assad
I am convinced that international terrorism gave itself the goal of not allowing the re-election of Bush. The statement by bin Laden in the final stages of the pre-election campaign is the best confirmation of this. — Vladimir Putin
The important things that in a campaign we talk about, let us not forget that once the election is over. — Mike Rounds
Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy. — Edward Abbey
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending the best. — Donald Trump
I was delighted that by campaigning throughout England, Scotland and Wales, addressing in all 39 public meetings, I had contributed to the victory of the Conservative Party at this general election. — Edward Heath
Political Campaign Quotes
Any politician or campaigner trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public won't get very far. — Nicola Sturgeon
I happen to think that conservatism, when properly applied to the 21st century, could actually help everybody. And the message of Trump's campaign was obviously not super-appealing to Latino Americans, black Americans and so forth. That really bothered me. — James David Vance
But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating. — Robert McChesney
But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating. — Robert Waterman McChesney
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. — James Harvey Robinson
The legions of reporters who cover politics don't want to quit the clash and thunder of electoral combat for the dry duty of analyzing the federal budget. As a consequence, we have created the perpetual presidential campaign. — Hugh Sidey
Well, you know, in any political campaign, you're gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it'll hurt the guy on the other side. — Bob Schieffer
The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged. — H. L. Mencken
The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is - second only to American political campaigns - the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time. — Larry Laudan
America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish. — Robert Reich
Presidential Election Quotes
Decisions made in Washington are more important to us than those made here in Dar es-Salaam. So, maybe my people should be allowed to vote in American presidential elections. — Julius Nyerere
Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. — Barack Obama
When we get a chance to take part in elections, I am ready to fight for leading positions, including in the presidential vote. — Alexei Navalny
American presidential elections usually amount to a series of overcorrections: Clinton begat Bush, who produced Obama, whose lax border policies fueled the rise of Trump. — Tucker Carlson
President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. — Rick Santorum
One of the most surreal moments in this election was after the third debate, when I heard a talking head say, Al Gore won on substance, on the issues. But you have to give the victory to Bush because he seems presidential. — Bradley Whitford
100 political parties put together can never defeat the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, come 2015 presidential election. — Patience Jonathan
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. — Mitt Romney
If you've got a business - you didn't build that. — Barack Obama
We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win. — Barry Crimmins
Presidential Candidate Quotes
Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep — Benito Mussolini
It's better to live one day as a lion than a dozen years as a sheep. — Charles M. Schulz
People with conservative temperaments don't become fighter pilots or presidential candidates - they're all that way to some extent. — Tucker Carlson
Obama a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one. — Harry Reid
Who can guarantee that he [Alexander Milinkevich, a Belarussian opposition presidential candidate] is the most promising candidate capable of competing with the incumbent president? — Alexander Lukashenko
[American Communist Party] legally exists in the U.S.A., it nominates its candidates in the elections, including Presidential elections. — Joseph Stalin
The Russian Federation has a growing Muslim minority, which is causing cultural and religious clashes. This is similar to mass immigration of Mexicans to America, and certain presidential candidates are tailoring their campaigns to get Mexican votes. — David Duke
I debated in high school! If you told things that weren't true or just made things out of whole cloth, you were penalized. It's too bad they don't apply the same standards to presidential candidates as they do to high school students. — Mark Hamill
I don't know if the presidential candidates are running for the White House or Animal House. — Bob Hope
It is true that all of the current presidential candidates once denied that they had any intention of running. But the fact that I am also a liar, doesn't make me a candidate. — Pat Paulsen
Us Presidential Quotes
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-and possibly teh bogey man. — Pat Paulsen
The anchor in our world today is freedom, holding us steady in times of change, a symbol of hope to all the world. — George H. W. Bush
This (presidential) system will not bear any resemblance to dictatorships under the same name in Africa and Asia, (It) will be unique to Turkey, it will be like a bee making honey, taking something from every flower and giving us a taste of a truly different honey. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Absolute freedom of the press to discuss public questions is a foundation stone of American liberty. — Herbert Hoover
Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood. — William Howard Taft
Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is. — Eamon de Valera
Admittedly, there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face. — Ronald Reagan
The disfranchisement of a single legal elector by fraud or intimidation is a crime too grave to be regarded lightly. — Benjamin Harrison
Think about every problem, every challenge, we face. The solution to each starts with education. — George H. W. Bush
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. — Thomas Jefferson
Obama Campaign Quotes
President Obama clearly cannot run on his record. All he's offering is more of the same. That's not good. Look at the economy. It's stagnating. And so, what they're now going to try and do is bring this campaign down to little things, distractions, distortions, smear, fear, anger, frustration. — Paul Ryan
Growing up, politics never trickled down to the areas we come from. But people from Obama's camp, and Obama himself, reached out to me and asked for my help on the campaign. We've sat and had dinner, and we've spoken on the phone. He's a very sharp guy. Very charming. Very cool. — Jay-Z
I've been an Obama supporter since he announced he was campaigning. I was aware of him as a senator, but I wasn't as engaged as I probably should've been. — Pete Wentz
According to federal reports filed yesterday, the Obama campaign spent more money than they raised in the month of May. They spent more money than they raised? Well, that's called being a Democrat — Jay Leno
We have a lot that we believe is in the best interests of our country,and I'm looking forward to working with Barack Obama during the campaign and then on after the inauguration. — Hillary Clinton
If you were following the [Barack] Obama campaign back then, closely, you could see it had become very close to banking interests. So I think you can't properly understand Hillary Clinton's foreign policy without understanding Saudi Arabia. — Julian Assange
Part of the challenge of the Barack Obama campaign was to try to neutralize that white backlash, and of course, he was masterful in doing that. — Cornel West
Barack Obama can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. — Sarah Palin
Obama's primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created. — Noam Chomsky
Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama. — David Limbaugh
Presidential Debate Quotes
Margaret Thatcher once said, "If you want something talked about, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." — Carly Fiorina
There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. — Gerald R. Ford
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women. — Mitt Romney
In a presidential campaign, you can't lie. You can't hide what you are and what you want. You can't hide what kind of President you'll be. You can't keep on talking about nothing indefinitely and committing to nothing, you can't keep running away from debate, masking the challenges. — Nicolas Sarkozy
The threshold by the Commission on Presidential Debates. In the words of the League of Women Voters, they are a fraud being perpetrated on the American public. — Jill Stein
A little tough talk in the midst of a campaign or as part of a presidential debate cannot obscure a record of 30 years of being on the wrong side of defense issues. — Dick Cheney
I had hoped that the current presidential campaign debates might educate the public as to what is really involved in the ongoing controversy over campaign financing. — James L. Buckley
I would say it's more important who the treasury secretary is than who the vice president is. If you want to have a debate here, I'd like a debate between potential treasury secretaries than the vice presidential debate. — Warren Buffett
Marco Rubio hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands. I've never heard of this. What - look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands - if they're small, something else must be small. I guarantee you, there's no problem. I guarantee you. — Donald Trump
The first presidential debate was down in Florida. Residents spent all day putting plywood on their televisions. — David Letterman
Political Election Quotes
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. — Abraham Lincoln
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times. — Mark Twain
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S Truman
A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932 ... and 50 million people died as a result ... what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important. — Bernie Sanders
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. — Gerald R. Ford
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S. Truman
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind. — Thomas Sowell
We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day. — Ann Richards
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. — George Macdonald
Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected. — Thomas Sowell
Election Candidate Quotes
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. — Gore Vidal
It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected, possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism. — Thomas Paine
God has called us to be His representatives in our nation and in our world. Select candidates who represent your views and work for their election. — James Dobson
This is what happens, when, for the first time in modern history, a candidate resorts to lawsuits to try to overturn the outcome of an election for president. — James Baker
Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in. — H. L. Mencken
So much of what passes for public life consists of little more than candidates without ideas, hiring consultants without conviction, to stage campaigns without content. The result, increasingly, is elections without voters. — Gerald R. Ford
Barack Obama didn't get elected president, would never have been elected president, had he decided to run as a black candidate. In order to reach the broadest number of people you have to speak to their interests as broadly as you can. — Gwen Ifill
One of the great virtues of our democratic system is that only one of the candidates gets elected. — Bernard Meltzer
In a new interview, the president discussed the upcoming election. He said that Hillary Clinton is going to do great as a presidential candidate. When asked how Biden would do, Obama said, 'Hillary's going to do great.' — Jimmy Fallon
Candidates have been telling you that if elected they would 'pull you from this bog hole of financial misery.' Now is a good chance to get even with 'em, by electing 'em, just to prove what a liar they are. — Will Rogers
Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns. — Fred Thompson
The real truth is that the Obama administration is professional at bullying, as we have witnessed with ACORN at work during the presidential campaign. It seems to me they are sending down their bullies to create fist fights among average American citizens who don't want a government-run health care plan forced upon them. — Jon Voight
When I hit the skins they all say, 'Damn Kane...
You knock out the Bush like a presidential campaign!' — Big Daddy Kane
In presidential campaign I released a 65-page file from the Syracuse University College of Law that showed poor grades, back in college, also. If I were plagiarizing consistently, my grades would have been better. — Joe Biden
Did I meet with people that were Russian? I'm sure, I'm sure I did. But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the presidential campaign in any way, shape or form. — Donald Trump, Jr.
I am suspending my presidential campaign. — Herman Cain
Let's be clear about what this [presidential] campaign is about. It's not about Donald Trump, he's an entertaining guys, he's the greatest show on Earth. — Marco Rubio
I say what I think. I'm a real person, not some manufactured pop tart who's afraid to step out of the hotel room. I am flawed. I swear, I have the occasional cocktail, I pick my nose and I fart. I'm not running for any presidential campaign at the moment. I'm a sassy girl. — Katy Perry
I pledge you, pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and of courage. This is more than a political campaign; it is a call to arms. Give me your help, not to win votes alone, but to win in this crusade to restore America to its own people. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale. — John W. Gardner
I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek. — Patrick Stewart
Bush had expertise in one thing: How to run a Presidential campaign. He understands campaigns and Presidential politics. He has no interest or disposition or I think probably - he's not stupid, but he's not bright, he's not a rocket scientist - he isn't interested in policy. — John Dean
The cost of congressional and presidential campaigns has been leaping every two or four years. I think this year it will be 60 percent more than 1996; well over twice as much as in 1992 in the presidential and congressional races. — Robert McChesney
Presidential elections always turn on personalities, they turn on how campaigns are run, they turn on natural desires for change. — Barack Obama
Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. — Mark McKinnon
During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians. — Al Sharpton
As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new. — Dan Rather
Herman Cain has suspended his presidential campaign, but he has asked the Secret Service if they could continue to provide him protection, at least until his wife cools off. — David Letterman
The 2016 presidential campaign is heating up. Can you feel the indifference, the apathy? — David Letterman
Thirty years ago, if you wanted to start a campaign against or for something, you had to print flyers, you had to make a million phone calls. Remember presidential campaigns and stuff? It was a very laborious thing. Now we can literally talk to each other in a nanosecond. — Ian Somerhalder
Presidential campaign getting kind of ugly, did you hear about this? Yesterday, a 27-year-old woman came for to deny rumors that she had an affair with Democratic front-runner John Kerry. The woman added, 'I would never cheat on Bill Clinton.' — Conan O'Brien
Marco Rubio's presidential campaign has raised $40 million in the last week. When he heard that, Rubio said, 'Hey, any chance I can drop out of the race and just keep the 40 million?' — Jimmy Fallon
All the political seers and sorcerers seem to be agreed that the coming Presidential campaign will be full of bitterness, and that most of it will be caused by religion. I count Prohibition as a part of religion, for it has surely become so in the United States. The Prohibitionists, seeing all their other arguments destroyed by the logic of events, have fallen back upon the mystical doctrine that God is somehow on their side, and that opposing them thus takes on the character of blasphemy. — H. L. Mencken
Four years in the White House and two presidential campaigns is an awful long time. In politics, every year in the White House is like dog years, six years off your life. — George Stephanopoulos
I work really long hours and work a lot and have done press tours and junkets, but there is nothing like a presidential campaign that I have experienced before...I think at one point we visited three different cities in one state in 12 hours. It's exhausting. — America Ferrera
Presidential campaigns are exhausting. Once they're over, we all heave a sigh of relief that we have our lives back, the constant emails and news reports no longer harangue us, and the topic even turns at times to something else entirely. — Marianne Williamson
The United States had eight years of Barack Obama. He made it incredibly clear that he was a right-wing Democrat. He cited Ronald Reagan lovingly in every stump speech for the last six months of the presidential 2008 campaign. And he made it clear that he was going to be a business-friendly Democratic president, and that he was not going to rock the neoliberal boat. And he didn't. — Avi Lewis
The campaign in the media takes place in many different formats, such as in citizens forums or town - hall shows. And because we don't have a presidential system in Germany, people vote for parties instead of specific candidates. From the perspective of smaller parties, even one single televised debate is a detested anomaly, because only the lead candidates from the conservatives and the SPD take part. — Angela Merkel
The whole straight talk thing, which John McCain kind of turned into a slogan at one point in one of his presidential campaigns, what that is, is a symptom of somebody who has no time for messing around. Because he`s trying to get stuff done constantly. — Rachel Maddow
Why would there be any contacts with Russian between the presidential campaign? This is all a distraction, and it's all part of a narrative to delegitimize the election and to question the legitimacy of this presidency. The American people see right through it. — Mike Pence
I joined presidential campaign in the summer, and I can tell you that all the contact by the Donald Trump campaign and associates was with the American people. We were fully engaged with taking his message to make America great again all across this country. That's why he won in a landslide election. — Mike Pence
When you have a president in his campaign who ran saying things that not are just contrary to a fact, but literally threatening to use presidential power in a way that would erode the rights and privileges and equality of large sections of Americans, God bless the protestors. — Cory Booker
It doesn't need to be deep and it doesn't need to be a 65-point plan, but just to give some concrete examples of how this economy is going to work for the people that feel right now it's not working for them, and then finally to get to central tension of this campaign. This is a presidential campaign where you have Americans now who want to see change. And Hillary Clinton is the status quo. How can she be both status quo and change? — Amy Walter
In U.S. elections, the term "October surprise" has come to mean an event in the closing weeks or days of a presidential campaign that could affect or even alter the outcome. — Alison Stewart
The Donald Trump phone call with the president of Taiwan seems very much in line with his rhetoric during the campaign that he intended to be tough on China. And don't forget, we have seen a lot of presidential candidates, memorably, Bill Clinton, who used to criticize George Herbert Walker Bush for coddling dictators and then take the much softer line with China once he's in office. — Karen Tumulty
The presidential campaign was oriented toward the way we elect the presidency, Electoral College, not the popular vote. The popular vote doesn't matter. This is not a direct democracy. We have a representative republic, and the popular vote doesn't matter and it never has, by design. — Rush Limbaugh
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