From today’s Quotes of the Day:
Tomorrow is election day in the US. At the table where I read, there is a stack of brochures proclaiming that each and every candidate is intelligent, honest, caring, devoted, hard working, well groomed, and straining at the bit to serve me and my community. Plus a few that say that the other guy is lying. My problem is that, with the two-party system, you only get to vote against one candidate in each race.
Our elections are free, it’s in the results where eventually we pay.
– Bill Stern
In politics it is necessary either to betray one’s country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
– Charles de Gaulle, 1899 – 1970
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
– Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 – 1956
Californians seem to understand that government’s major function is to entertain. No matter who is elected, the politicos end up swindling us, wasting our tax money on pork-barrel projects. The only way to reclaim at least some of that lost money is to elect politicians who put on a good show.
– Orange County Register
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
– Otto von Bismarck, 1815 – 1898
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
– Lily Tomlin