The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
Joseph StalinRead
I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this - who will count the votes, and how.
Interpretation
The process of counting votes is more critical than who casts them.
This quote emphasizes the significance of the vote-counting process in elections, suggesting that the integrity of the counting can influence the outcome more than voter participation itself. It brings attention to the power dynamics involved in determining the results of an election, highlighting the importance of transparency and fairness in the electoral process.
In practice
During a debate on election reforms, this quote can illustrate the need for transparent vote counting.
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference,' you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.
You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.
It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.
Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.
We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body
The extremism of the Trump administration has galvanized women to push back against the political system that has disadvantaged them for a generation.
The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.
There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.
It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.