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. . . EFFORT see: "DILIGENCE" see: "ENERGY" see: "PERSEVERANCE" see: "STRENGTH" see: "TRYING" see: "SUCCESS" for other related links Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get. --attributed to H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (b. 1940) American author. Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? --Robert Browning (18121889) English poet. _Andrea del Sarto_ [1855] Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. --Thomas Alva Edison (18471931) American inventor. Quoted in "Washington Post" [10 May 1915]. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. --T.S. Eliot (18881965) Anglo-American poet, critic, and dramatist. _Four Quartets_ [1943] "East Coker" Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. --Mohandas K. Gandhi (18691948) Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic movement against British rule. "Young India" [9 March 1922] [John Wooden] taught us that doing the best you are capable of is victory enough. --Kareem Abdul-Jabbar [Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor] (b. 1947) American professional basketball player. _Kareem_, "Saturday December 3" [1988] - Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. _Lives of the English Poets_ [1781], "Pope" What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoted in William Seward _Biographia_ [1799]. - We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees. --Jason Kidd (b. 1973) American professional basketball player. Attributed remark after being drafted by the Dallas Mavericks. We are challenged on every hand to work untiringly to achieve excellence in our lifework. Not all men are called to specialized or professional jobs; even fewer rise to the heights of genius in the arts and sciences; many are called to be laborers in factories, fields and streets. But no work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." --Martin Luther King, Jr. (19291968) American civil rights leader. Sermon at New Covenant Baptist Church, Chicago, Ill. [9 April 1967]. The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will. --attributed to Vince Lombardi (19131970) American football player and coach of the Green Bay Packers. He led the Packers to five NFL championships including two Super Bowl victories. The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight; But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. _The Ladder of Saint Augustine_ [1858] The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition. --Dwight Morrow (18731931) American lawyer, banker, and diplomat. Letter to his son, in Harold Nicolson _Dwight Morrow_ [1935]. - The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally that all men are created equal. Yet every day I find reason to believe this to be untrue. I run in a race and half the field beats me. I attend a seminar and can't follow the reasoning of the speaker. I read a book and I am unable to understand what is evident to others. Daily I am instructed in my deficiencies. I do something, physical or mental, and realize how far I fall short of what other people accomplish. Despite the Declaration, we are apparently not born equal. I cannot aspire to win the Boston Marathon. I most certainly will not receive the Nobel Prize for literature. I am surrounded by people who know more, do more, and make more than I do. But, like many others, I identify myself with my performance. I become my marathon time. I become my latest book. I become the last lecture I gave. . . . But I am more than a body-mind complex. I am a soul as well. I share with everyone on this planet one power infinitely more important than talent: willpower. In this power of the soul, all of us are created equal. . . . The will considers the question, Will you or won't you have it so? And in that decision you can be the equal of anyone else. "Effort is the measure of a man," wrote [William] James. How well we know that. I am never content with contentment. I am uneasy when things go easy. "Don't take things easy," said a great physician, "take things hard." Doing one's absolute best becomes the criterion. --George Sheehan (19181993) American doctor and author. _Personal Best_ [1989], "The Many Levels of Motivation" - [William] Shockley was famous for his homely but shrewd examples. One day a student confessed to being puzzled by the concept of amplification, which was one of the prime functions of the transistor. Shockley told him, 'If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the exergy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.' --Tom Wolfe (b. 1931) American journalist and novelist. _Hooking Up_ [2000] - If a task once begun Never leave it till it's done. Be the labor great or small Do it well or not at all. --anon. "Always Finish"  . . see: "BRAGGING" see: "CONCEIT" see: "SNOBS" see: "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for other related links Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only. --[Amos] Bronson Alcott (17991888) American philosopher, teacher, and reformer; father of Louisa May Alcott. _Concord Days_ [1872] Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. --G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (18741936) English essayist, novelist, and poet. _Orthodoxy_ [1908], "The Logic of Elfland" Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself. --William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (19242006) American clergyman and peace activist. _Credo_ [2004], "Faith, Hope, Love" I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. _Contarini Fleming_, ch. VII [1832] He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Adam Bebe_ [1859] I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own. --[Sarah] Margaret Fuller (18101850) American critic, teacher, and woman of letters. Quoted in "The Eclectic Magazine" [June 1852]. When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself. --Charles de Gaulle (18901970) French general and politician. "France: Down from Olympus" in _Time_ [17 December 1965]. What hypocrites we seem to be whenever we talk of ourselves! Our words sound so humble, while our hearts are so proud. --Augustus William Hare (17921834) British essayist. _Guesses at Truth_ [1827] (Co-written with brother Julius) Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week. --Janis Joplin (19431970) American singer. Complaining because Dwight Eisenhower's death pushed her off the cover of _Newsweek_. Quoted in _New Music Express_ [12 April 1969]. We often boast that we are never bored; but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678] Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. --Frank Leahy (19081973) Coached Notre Dame football team to 4 national championships. _Look_ (magazine) [10 January 1955]. My greatest strength is that I have no weaknesses. --John McEnroe (b. 1959) American tennis player. In "New York Times" [1979], as quoted in Howard Lauther _Creating Characters: A Writer's Reference to the Personality_ [2004 ed.]. My mother brought me up to be a genius, and she was one of the most successful women I've ever known. --Preston Sturges [Edmund Preston Biden] (18981959) American motion picture director, screenwriter, and playwright. Attributed in Barry Norman _The Story of Hollywood_ [1988]. I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious. --Walt Whitman (18191892) American poet. _Leaves of Grass_ "Song of Myself" [written 1855] The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie. --Johann Georg Zimmermann (17281795) Swiss philosophical writer and physician. _Aphorisms And Reflections On Men, Morals And Things_ [1800] ----- solipsism (noun) [sa-'lip-si-zκm] The view that only the self can be known or that the self is the only reality (egotism). ;void(0)) ELECTIONS . . see: "POLITICS" for related links These bickerings of opposite parties, and their mutual reproaches, their declamations, their sing-song, their triumphs and defiances, their dismals and prophecies, are all delusion. --John Adams (17351826) First VP and second President of the United States. Letter to Abigail Adams [16 July 1774]. Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing. --Bernard Baruch (18701965) American financier. In Meyer Berger _New York_ [1960]. An election is nothing more than the advanced auction of stolen goods. --attributed to Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. --attributed to Otto von Bismarck (18151898) Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Prussia 18621890. He unified Germany with a series of successful wars and became the first Chancellor 18711890 of the German Empire. [While campaigning for governor of South Dakota in 1926:] There are no issues. My opponent has a job and I want it. That's what this election is about. --William J. Bulow (18691960) American politician and lawyer. Quoted in Jeff Greenfield _Playing to Win: An Insider's Guide to Politics_ [1980]. - In Texas, Kennedy's 46,000-vote margin was the closest statewide race there since 1948, when Kennedy's running mate, Lyndon B. Johnson, won a Senate seat by 87 votes (the origin of the nickname "Landslide Lyndon"). Morton's operatives, aided by local Republicans, uncovered plenty of political chicanery. For instance: In Fannin County, which had 4,895 registered voters, 6,138 votes were cast, three-quarters of them for Kennedy. In one precinct of Angelia County, 86 people voted and the final tally was 147 for Kennedy, 24 for Nixon. On and on it went. The Republicans demanded a recount, claiming that it would give them 100,000 votes and victory. John Connally, the state Democratic chairman, said the Republicans were just "haggling for headlines" and predicted that a recount would give Kennedy another 50,000 votes. But there was no recount. The Texas Election Board, composed entirely of Democrats, had already certified Kennedy as the winner. In Chicago, where Kennedy won by more than 450,000 votes, local reporters uncovered so many stories of electoral shenanigans including voting by the dead that the Chicago Tribune concluded that "the election of November 8 was characterized by such gross and palpable fraud as to justify the conclusion that [Nixon] was deprived of victory." --Peter Carlson, "Another Race To the Finish" _Washington Post_ [17 November 2000] - Don't get mad. Don't get even. Just get elected, then get even. --attributed to James Carville (b. 1944) American political strategist. [Headline about U.S. election:] Dewey Defeats Truman. --"Chicago Tribune" [3 November 1948] When the day of election approaches, visit your constituents far and wide. Treat liberally, and drink freely, in order to rise in their estimation, though you fall in your own. True, you may be called a drunken dog by some of the clean-shirt and silk- stocking gentry, but the real roughnecks will style you a jovial fellow. Their votes are certain, and frequently count double. --David Crockett (17861836) American folk hero who died at the Alamo. _Exploits and Adventures in Texas_, pp. 56-9 [1836] - "To Ensure Loyal Voters, Gracie Allen's Buttons Were the Sew-On Kind" by Cynthia Crossen in _The Wall Street Journal_ [27 October 2004] Her platform was "redwood trimmed with 'nutty' pine." She welcomed foreign relations, "so long as they bring their own bedding and don't stay too long." And while she sympathized with the poor, she rightly noted that "even brokers vote, especially if it doesn't rain on election day and the Yanks are playing out of town." She was Gracie Allen, and in 1940, she ran for president of the United States. Ms. Allen's quixotic campaign began as a publicity stunt for the radio comedy show she performed with her husband, George Burns. Though the gag was scheduled to last only two weeks, Ms. Allen's candidacy took on a life of its own. Within a few months, she had a mascot (a kangaroo), a slogan ("It's in the bag."), a song (one line: "If the country's going Gracie, so can you.") and a 34-city whistle-stop tour that went from Los Angeles to Omaha, Neb., where her newly formed Surprise Party gathered for its first -- and last -- nominating convention. Ms. Allen was not the only entertainer who dabbled in presidential politics. Eddie Cantor, the much-loved singer and actor, announced his candidacy on the radio in 1932. Will Rogers's name was floated in 1928 and 1932. Later, Pat Paulsen would throw his hat into the ring of the 1968, '72 and '76 elections. But Gracie Allen was the only one who, as she herself conceded, "forgot to take her hat off before she threw it in the ring." [. . . ] Ms. Allen's campaign was cartoonish and self-mocking, and she never made any attempt to get her name on a ballot. (In real life, neither she nor Mr. Burns publicly supported political candidates or causes.) She did, however, take some uncompromising stands on the issues of the day. She believed that Congress should work on a commission: "Whenever the country prospered, Congress would get 10% of the additional take." Also, farms should be larger "so asparagus can grow lying down." As for the idea that a woman couldn't cope with the demands of the office, she declared, "If a woman isn't qualified to be president, why is it you never see anything but pants on scarecrows?" Also, she asked, didn't men have plenty of their own shortcomings? "When I think of the awkward way our presidents act when a French ambassador kisses them on both cheeks," she tsked, "I don't have to tell you any more, do I, brother?" [...] In her presidential campaign, Ms. Allen knew her lack of experience meant an uphill battle. "Lincoln had certain advantages we don't have today," she grumbled. "For instance, he could go out and split a bunch of rails, but the railroads are using iron ones more and more." As for kissing babies, Ms. Allen discriminated on the basis of gender: "I won't kiss male babies until they're over 21," she explained. She also invented the sew-on campaign button to discourage her supporters from changing their minds. Gracie Allen learned enough about politics in 1940 to write (with a ghostwriter) "How to Become President," a book of advice for future candidates. "Presidents are made, not born," she noted. "That's a good thing to remember. It's silly to think that presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won't admit it." In composing campaign letters, she counseled, "Don't start out, 'Dear Sir or Madam.' Be definite. People like to be one or the other." Another suggestion: "You should come from a good family, because while breeding isn't everything, it is said to be lots of fun." [. . . ] - "Fiasco in 1936 Survey Brought 'Science' To Election Polling" by Cynthia Crossen in _The Wall Street Journal_ [2 October 2006] President Alf Landon? In the fall of 1936, the most influential poll in America, run by Literary Digest magazine, predicted that Mr. Landon, governor of Kansas, would trounce the Democratic incumbent, Franklin Roosevelt, with 57% of the popular vote. Literary Digest's poll was massive -- it sent out 10 million ballots that year -- and it had correctly forecast five previous presidential elections. There was widespread concern that the poll might create a bandwagon effect, giving Mr. Landon an even bigger victory. The poll could hardly have been more wrong. Mr. Roosevelt won the election with more than 60% of the popular vote; Mr. Landon carried only two states, Maine and Vermont. The failure of the Literary Digest and other, smaller polls, "will undoubtedly revive agitation for their abolition or control," wrote the New York Times. Kenneth McKellar, a Democratic senator from Tennessee, called the Literary Digest poll "wicked," and promised to sponsor legislation to put polling under federal supervision. Although by that time polling was not a young business, it was still operating in the statistical Dark Ages. First used around 1824, straw polls (named for the way farmers threw a fistful of straw in the air to see which way the wind was blowing) were often taken by traveling journalists or private citizens. They might ask everyone on a steamship or train how they intended to vote. [ . . . ] Literary Digest, a general-interest weekly founded in 1890, began doing straw polls in 1916. It mailed ballots to its subscribers, gradually building up a list with publicly available names of people who owned telephones and cars. At its peak, the magazine sent ballots to 20 million people, and employed 400 clerks to tally the returns. But magazine subscribers and owners of cars and telephones during the Great Depression tended to be more affluent than the average voter -- and more Republican. Indeed, in its 1936 pre-election report, the magazine reported that a skeptic had called its office to ask, "Has the Republican National Committee purchased the Literary Digest?" Commented the magazine, "Absurd and amusing." In its postelection report, however, the editors acknowledged that the poll undersampled some groups of voters. And whose fault was that? "We wonder why we get better cooperation in what we have always regarded as a public service from Republicans than we do from Democrats. Do Republicans live nearer mailboxes? Do Democrats generally disapprove of straw polls?" Even among the subset of people who received ballots, there was an element of self-selection. People with ample leisure were more likely to take the trouble to help Literary Digest. But plenty of the "lower strata," as the magazine called them, voted that year. There was at least one man who relished the Literary Digest fiasco: George Gallup. Mr. Gallup, a market researcher and syndicated columnist, had begun experimenting with so-called scientific methods of polling, and in July 1936, he predicted Literary Digest would call the election erroneously. He himself projected a Democratic victory, although his margin turned out to be way off. Mr. Gallup, of course, was one of the leaders of the pack that predicted Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman in 1948. Pollsters' methods and tools -- and confidence -- had improved so much in the dozen years since 1936 that they decided they didn't need to collect more data after October. In a postelection poll by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan, 14% of Truman voters said they made up their minds in the two weeks before the election, and 3% said they decided on Election Day. "Everyone believes in public-opinion polls," joked the radio comic Goodman Ace. "Everybody from the man on the street all the way up to President Thomas E. Dewey." By 1948, Literary Digest was long gone. It had already been facing financial problems when its poll flopped; it suspended publication in 1938 and later merged with Time magazine. Its editor in 1936, Wilfred J. Funk, derided Mr. Gallup's methodology, saying mockingly that the Digest's poll had never been able to discover "how many rich men, poor men, G-men, racketeers and candlestick makers" voted in any given election. Twelve years later, a reporter asked Mr. Funk to comment on the Truman-Dewey polls. "I do not want to seem to be malicious," Mr. Funk said, "but I can't help but get a good chuckle out of this. ... I wonder if the word science will continue to be used with this type of public-opinion poll." - We campaign in poetry, but when we're elected we're forced to govern in prose. --Mario Cuomo (b. 1932) American lawyer and politician. Speech at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. [15 February 1985]. There is a wonderful anecdote about the election of 1960: the evening of the election, Johnson called up Kennedy and said, 'I see that I'm winning Texas, you're losing Ohio, and we're doing all right together in Pennsylvania.' --Robert Dallek (b. 1934) American historian. In Brian Lamb _Booknotes: Stories From American History_ [2001]. I was told that people did not like negative ads. So I didn't run any. I lost. --Bob Dole (b. 1923) Republican senator and majority leader and unsuccesful candidate in the 1996 presidential election. (On the Nightline television news program [10 November 1988]; describing his race for the Republican presidential nomination against George H. W. Bush.) [Remark while running for election as governor of Louisiana in 1983:] The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy. --Edwin Edwards (b. 1927) American politician. Quoted in "Economist" [9 March 1985]. An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. --George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans] (18191880) English novelist. _Felix Holt_ [1866] Our people are slow to learn the wisdom of sending character instead of talent to Congress. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Journal_ [8 May 1844] I am truly a candidate with both my feet on the ground . . . And when on next November fifth, I am elected chief executive of this fair land, amidst thunderous cheering and shouting and throwing babies out the window, I shall, my fellow citizens, offer no such empty panaceas as a New Deal, or an Old Deal, or even a Re-Deal. No my friends, the reliable old False Shuffle was good enough for my father and it's good enough for me. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. _Fields for President_ [1939] Why should it be that two parties with few if any essential differences are ready to speak of each other as if a cultural or even a civil war were only a few speeches away? Obviously, much of this fatuous rhetoric arises from the need to disagree more and more about less and less, to maintain the mills of fundraising in a churning condition, and to keep the dwindling groups of genuine loyalists and activists in a state of excited pseudo-commitment. --Christopher Hitchens (b. 1949) British journalist, author, and literary critic. _Atlantic Monthly_ "Thinking Like an Apparatchik" [2004?]. Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. John P. Foley (ed.) _The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia_, p. 842 [1900]. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweeledum and Tweedledee. --Helen Keller (18801968) American author and educator who was blind and deaf. 1911 letter to an English suffragist, in Howard Zinn _The Twentieth Century: A People's History_, ch. 2 [1984]. Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide. --telegraphed message from JFK's father, read by JFK at a Gridiron dinner in Washington [15 March 1958]. (Thought to be JFK's invention.) In J.F. Cutler _Honey Fitz_ [1962]. In an American election, there are no losers, because whether or not our candidates are successful, the next morning we all wake up as Americans. --John F. Kerry (b. 1943) American politician. (In his concession speech at Fanueil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts [3 November 2004].) I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded in this connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing a stream. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [1861-1865]. Reply to National Union League [9 June 1864]. - [Of Harry Truman's success in the 1948 presidential campaign:] If there had been any formidable body of cannibals in the country he would have promised to provide them with free missionaries fattened at the taxpayer's expense. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. "Baltimore Sun" [7 November 1948] Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief efforts to trying to prove that the other is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. _Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks_ [1956] - Boss Tweed: "As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it?" --Thomas Nast (18401902) German-born American cartoonist. Caption of cartoon _Harper's Weekly_ [7 October 1871] Clinton has vindicated the anti-Vietnam, draft-dodging, drug-taking behavior of the sixties. ... The Silent Majority was a reaction to that moral decay, but who's going to do it now? The Clintons are going to be our moral symbols for four years, maybe eight. Four years, and maybe we can recover. Eight, and the damage will be irreparable. --Richard Nixon (19131994) American Republican statesman, President [19691974]. Election night [1992]. [When asked if he had been a member of Parliament:] Yes, I was elected by the highly intelligent, far-sighted people of the constituency of Hereford in 1929 and thrown out by the same besotted mob two years later. --Frank Owen (19051979) English journalist and politician. - When I, kap (your host - next time read the Home Page!) campaigned for local office in the early 1990s I think the speech that directly led to my election was the following. My very fellow Las Vegans: Today, here, in this historic library, I am announcing my candidacy for City Councilman. Yes, there are a lot of other people running for City Councilman, but I firmly believe I am uniquely qualified for this, one of the premier offices in this great city of ours, and I intend to explain why. First, however, let me address a more urgent question, and that is the future facing our children's children's children's children. And their children. When their time comes, our time will have passed. But they will look back and say, "What was that all about?" Someone will have to answer. And that someone is why I am running. My friends, today I say to you, I want to be that someone. We live in a time of great challenge. All right, perhaps that is putting it strongly. Perhaps it is old-fashioned to speak bluntly, without vacillation or verbal varnish. So be it. Some have urged me, "Don't be blunt." But if this election is about anything, it is about not hiding one's light of conviction under a bushel of demurral. So to speak. It is about standing up and saying, "Here I am." Well, friends, here I am. I would not be truthful if I said to you that our problems can be fixed overnight. But, my fellow Las Vegans, today I say to you, if we do not start to fix them, they will fix us. And a fine fix we will be in then. Often, as I have traveled the breadth and depth and width of this great, great city, I have been asked, "Who are you?" What do you want?" Today, I have an answer. Today, I say to you, I want to be that person. They ask, "Do you have it in you to lead this city?" The answer must be "I think so." So, as I stand here in this room of the Rainbow Library, this historic building where I was born, in the days when "illegal aliens" meant little green men from outer space, let the word go forth. And then let it come back. And take a load off, as we Americans say. So that future generations will say, "They ran the good race, fought the good fight. And they knew what time it was, for they kept the watch wound." Thank you and God bless you. [Okay, I lied. I never did run for office nor did I write that speech. It was adapted from an article written by Christopher Buckley which appeared in "The New Yorker" on 10 April 1995.] --kap - I will not make age an issue. . . . I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. --Ronald Reagan (19112004) U.S. President [19811989] and former Hollywood actor. (Said at age 73 regarding his 56-year-old opponent, Walter F. Mondale, during a televised presidential campaign debate [21 October 1984].) - More men have been elected between Sundown and Sunup, than ever were elected between Sunup and Sundown. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. _The Illiterate Digest_ "Mr. Ford and Other Political Self-Starters" [1924] The more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. _The Illiterate Digest_ [1924] On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. "Daily Telegram" [21 February 1930] - Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Man and Superman_ [1905] I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected. --William Tecumseh Sherman (18201891) American Union general. Message to the Republican Convention [1884]. - Someone asked me, as I came in, down on the street, how I felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell--Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh. --Adlai E. Stevenson (19001965) American Democratic politician. Commenting on his defeat in the presidential election [5 November 1952]. [After his defeat in the 1952 presidential election:] A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House. --Adlai E. Stevenson (19001965) American Democratic politician. Speech in Washington D.C. [13 December 1952]. - Had America every attraction under heaven that nature and social enjoyment can offer, this electioneering madness would make me fly from it in disgust. It engrosses every conversation, it irritates every temper, it substitutes party spirit for personal esteem; and, in fact, vitiates the whole system of society. --Frances Trollope (17801863) English author [mother of Anthony Trollope]. _Domestic Manners of the Americans_ [1832] The people have spoken the bastards! --Dick Tuck (b. 1924) American political consultant. After losing his campaign for the California state legislature. Quoted in "Time" [13 August 1973]. If nominated, I will run for the Mexican border. If elected, I will fight extradition. --Morris King (Mo) Udall (19221998) American politician and professional basketball player. (After party liberals urged him to challenge then-President Carter for the 1980 presidential nomination.) - If we mean to support the liberty and independence which it has cost us so much blood and treasure to establish, we must drive far away the demon of party spirit and local reproach. --George Washington (17321799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [17751783] and first president of the United States [17891797]. Letter to Arthur Fenner [4 June 1790]. - Heroes and philosophers, brave men and vile, have since Rome and Athens tried to make this particular manner of transfer of power work effectively; no people has succeeded at it better, or over a longer period of time, than the Americans. Yet as the transfer of power takes place, there is nothing to be seen except an occasional line outside a church or school, or a file of people fidgeting in the rain, waiting to enter the booths. No bands play on election day, no troops march, no guns are readied, no conspirators gather in secret headquarters. The noise and the blare, the bands and the screaming, the pageantry and oratory of the long fall campaign, fade on election day. All the planning is over, all effort spent. Now the candidates must wait. --Theodore H. White (19151986) American journalist, historian, and novelist. _The Making of the President, 1960_ [1961] (winner of the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.) - When I die I want to be buried in Chicago so I can still be active in politics. --anon. (Referring to the voter registration of the dead.) - CAMPAIGN SLOGANS Tippecanoe and Tyler too. --Whig (Harrison-Tyler) campaign [1840] As Maine goes, so goes the nation. --Political saying [c. 1840s] We Polked You in '44, We Shall Pierce You in '52. --Democratic (Pierce) campaign [1852] Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, The Continental liar from the State of Maine. --Political taunt used by the Democrats during the presidential campaign of 1884. Blaine supporters responded with their own taunt: 'Ma, Ma, where's my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.' (Candidate Cleveland acknowledged that he had fathered an illegitimate child - GBAQ.) McKinley drinks soda water, Bryan drinks rum, McKinley is a gentleman, Bryan is a bum. --Republican (McKinley) campaign [1900] A Chicken in Every Pot. A Car in Every Garage. --Republican (Hoover) campaign [1928] Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner. --Republican campaign slogan [1932] I Like Ike. --Republican (Eisenhower) campaign [1952] We're Madly For Adlai. --Democratic (Stevenson) campaign [1956] Would you buy a used car from this man? --Slogan directed against Richard Nixon [1960] All the way with LBJ. --Democratic campaign slogan [1964]. - ----- psephology (noun) [se-'fah-lκ-gee] The study of political campaigns and elections, including voting trends that predict election results. It could also be used to refer to the conduct of elections and voting trends themselves. ;void(0)) ELEPHANTS . . see: "ANIMALS" for related links He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life.' --Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (18321898) English writer and logician. _Sylvie and Bruno_ Chapter V [1889] I meant what I said And I said what I meant . . . An elephant's faithful One hundred per cent! --Theodor Seuss Geisel [Dr. Seuss] (19041991) American writer and illustrator of children's books. _Horton Hatches the Egg_ [1940] When you have got an elephant by the hind leg and he is trying to run away, it is best to let him run. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Attributed in Charles Willis Thompson _The Fiery Epoch, 1830-1877_ [1931]. [Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding (Groucho [Julius Henry] Marx):] Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas, and how he got in my pajamas I'll never know. --"Animal Crackers" [1930 film] Screenplay by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. [Commodore Jackson (W.C. Fields):] I like women as I like elephants. I like to look at 'em but I wouldn't own one. --"Mississippi" [1935 film] Screenplay by Francis Martin & Jack Cunningham. Once there was an elephant, Who tried to use the telephant No! No! I mean an elephone Who tried to use the telephone. --Laura Elizabeth Richards (18501943) American author. "Eletelephony", l. I [c. 1880] They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance. (The next-to-last words of General John B. Sedgwick.) --General John B. Sedgwick (18131864) The most senior officer from either side to be killed during the American Civil War. - Why don't elephants ride bicycles? They don't have thumbs to ring the bells. end page | EARS - ECONOMY (THE) | EDUCATION | EFFORT - ELEPHANTS | ELOQUENCE - EMOTION | EMOTIONS & FEELINGS | EMPIRE - ENERGY | ENGLAND - ENGLISH (THE) | ENGLISH (LANGUAGE) | ENLIGHTENMENT - ENVY | ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES | EPITAPHS - EQUAL RIGHTS | ERROR - EVIDENCE | EVIL - EXECUTIONS | EXERCISE - EYES | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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