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If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
--
No known attribution to Twain. This has also been attributed to Emma Goldman. “If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.”

 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)

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Of course, I also encountered hostile reactions in campaigning. People called me names, even spat at me; I received more threats. The most remarkable people, to me, were those who apparently approved of everything I said but nonetheless wouldn't dream of voting for the Liberal Party. It reminded me of Somalia: they wouldn't vote outside their clan.

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

 

She smiled. “I wouldn’t mind. Is that a difference between men and women or between you and me?”
“I think it’s a difference between you and merely sane people.”

 

Joe Haldeman

 

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible psychological reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

 

David Foster Wallace

 

This country’s split right now. I think if you’re a Republican, well, you’re wrong. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I own like four Republicans in case three break down. But I think if you’re a Republican, that’s awesome; if you’re a Democrat, that’s awesome. I just think we need to vote. We need to vote a lot. My favorite thing to vote on are the initiatives, you know the propositions, where you’ll see an argument for one side and you’ll think thats a good point, and then you’ll see the argument for the other side, and you’ll think thats a good point too, and you don’t know which way to vote. I think we need a few that it’s just obvious which way to vote, right off the bat. Like wouldn’t it be cool if it was like proposition ninety-seven: Should we continue to not eat babies. Right there you’d be like, “Hell yeah, I don’t wanna eat babies, you know, I don’t have time, they’re not delicious, and it would be eating babies and that’s weird to me,” so there’s three reasons that I come up with to voting no. But the way they phrase those things when you get to the voting booth, you don’t know which way you’re voting, cause it’s like, “Should we not eat unbabies not on this not day” and you’re just sitting there like “F**k! I don’t wanna eat babies! You know?! I don’t have time, they’re not delicious, remember my reasons, I had like three.” So you vote no on it and then it’s on the news the next day, “Well, 74% of Americans have decided it’s time to eat babies.”

 

Kyle Cease

 

I remember the first slap, just as I was being brought in. Already then something was lost forever, a basic trust. If there's an exquisite collection of Meissen porcelain and a man takes a cup and deliberately drops it to the floor, shattering it, why wouldn't he then proceed to break everything else? What difference does it make, cup or tureen, once the man has made clear his disregard for porcelain? With that first blow, something akin to porcelain shattered in me. It was a hard slap, forceful yet casual, given for no reason, before I had even identified myself. If they would do that to me, why wouldn't they do worse? Indeed, how could they stop themselves? A single blow is a dot, meaningless. It's a line that is wanted, a connection between the dots that will give purpose and direction. One blow demands a second and then a third and onwards.

 

Yann Martel