Campaigning Quotes

“There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
― Audre Lorde

“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them”
― Adlai E. Stevenson II

“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
― Mario Cuomo

“All my years campaigning have given me one clear message: Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least. To have a democracy, you have to want one. Still, I realize this fully only by looking back.”
― Gloria Steinem

“This trip was not about running for president. This trip was preparing to BE president.”
― Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

“I would recommend you run as if you are running for governor in three states - Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. There were the first three caucus or primary states. "Run and sound local, like you want to be their governor." A lot of candidates make the huge mistake of trying to run in 27 states. "Run three governor's races, and you'll have a really good shot. Focus on three. Do well in three. And the others will come.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“If raising money is critical to getting reelected, so is spending taxpayers' money to reward those who help get us reelected.”
― Congressman X, The Confessions of Congressman X

“The first step was for field staff to get an absentee or early voting ballot to those them deemed pro-Trump because they scored a 90 or above on a call of 0 to 100 in the national database.”
― Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

“The same people who tell you they hate negative political TV commercials will also be able to tell you exactly what was in them. A political strategist's job is to exploit negative but memorable ads for the purpose of winning votes. The trick is being able to engage in negative campaigning without being successfully cast, or widely perceived, as running a "negative campaign.”
― Roger Stone, Stone's Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style

“He felt like he was here to fight for everyone, but for himself most of all, because he needed to live in a world that was more equitable. A world that took care of the sick and protected the weak while it also gave free rein to those who innovated and made the world richer, more connected, more plentiful for everyone. Those things were not separate, not mutually exclusive, and they needed to be tied back together in the consciousness of our nation, and the world, not just California. But like in everything else, California was as good a place as any to start something.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“They had devised a simple story, with characters, with an objective, with a beginning, middle, and end.”
― Bob Woodward, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House

“The general took much pains to reply to Alexander, but didn't so much as let on that there was any such candidate as myself at all. He had been speaking for a considerable time, when a large flock of guinea-fowls came very near to where he was, and set up the most unmerciful chattering that ever was heard, for they are a noisy little brute any way. They so confused the general, that he made a stop, and requested that they might be driven away. I let him finish his speech, and then walking up to him, said aloud, "Well, colonel, you are the first man I ever saw that understood the language of fowls." I told him that he had not had the politeness to name me in his speech, and that when my little friends, the guinea-fowls, had come up and began to holler "Crockett, Crockett, Crockett," he had been ungenerous enough to stop, and drive them all away.”
― David Crockett, A narrative of the life of David Crockett of the state Tennessee

“When has sounding like a completely ignorant moron ever stopped our elected officials? Never, that's when.

You're going to make mistakes, and even if you don't, we promise you will still feel stupid at one point or another. It'll pass, and no one was paying that much attention anyway. Move forward with a sprinkle of the delusion that your least favorite politician would proudly display.”
― Sami Sage, Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in Our Country and in Our Lives