In Russian: Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса.
Said in 1923, as quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary http://www.panrus.com/books/details.php?langID=1&bookID=5905 (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (Борис Бажанов. Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина). (Text online in Russian) http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt.
Variant (loose) translation: The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
Contemporary witnesses
“I would rather be a woman without a vote and yet know HOW to vote, than to be a man who HAS a vote and hasn't sense enough to use it.”
Machinists' Monthly Journal
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Gertrude Breslau Hunt 6
1869–1952Related quotes
“A man without a vote is a man without protection.”
Speech at Birmingham, Alabama, published in the Birmingham Post (27 October 1921) quoted in Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921 (1977) by Carl V. Harris (1977) University of Tennessee Press, ISBN 087049211X.
1920s
This appears to be a variant of a widely disseminated Republican joke with no published attribution of its authorship to Buckley.
Mark Hatfield, as quoted in The Condition of Republicanism (1968) by Nick Thimmesch, p. 65
They told me if I voted for Goldwater we'd be at war in Vietnam in six months — and I did and we were.
Anonymous voter, as quoted in It All Comes Back to Me Now : Character Portraits from the "Golden Apple" (2001) by William O'Shaughnessy, p. 85
Buckley did say this on the Firing Line episode "Vietnam: Pull Out? Stay In? Escalate?" According to the transcript here http://hoohila.stanford.edu/firingline/programView2.php?programID=22, he says "...if someone told me that if I voted for Goldwater, we would escalate the war, I did and we have."
Misattributed
Variant: They told me if I voted for Goldwater in 1964, that we'd have more war and higher prices. Well, I did, and we do.
Appearance on The Midnight Special in August 1972 in a Get Out The Vote drive; as quoted at the official Cass Elliot website.
“I'd rather cut my arm off than vote for that jerk.”
As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s
Speech to the Conservative Party conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1 (07 October 2002)
“It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.”
Competition versus Cooperation (1900)
Context: I would address a few words to those who are in sympathy with the Social Democratic Party, but who hesitate to vote for it for fear they may lose their votes. Let me say to you: It is infinitely better to vote for freedom and fail than to vote for slavery and succeed.