“friend!—Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?”

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "friend!—Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?" by Thomas Carlyle?
Thomas Carlyle photo
Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

Related quotes

Frederick Douglass photo

“A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://books.google.ca/books?id=zFclDyk2LTEC&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false (15 November 1867).
1860s

Thomas Carlyle photo
James A. Garfield photo

“Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech Nominating John Sherman for President (1880)

Oscar Wilde photo
Neil Kinnock photo

“Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

On the Provisional IRA; speech in the House of Commons (23 October 1986), reported in Hansard, 6th series, vol. 102, col. 1287.

James G. Watt photo

“If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”

James G. Watt (1938) United States Secretary of the Interior

As quoted in "The Earth's Storm Troopers", Phoenix New Times (7 August 1991)
1990s

Henry David Thoreau photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Francisco Franco photo

“We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

Statement during the civil war, cited in 1938 by Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915079,00.html, also cited in John A. Crittenden, Parties and elections in the United States, Prentice-Hall, 1982, (p.6).
1930s, 1938

Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“The right to change the government by the ballot box and not the barrel of a gun; perhaps the best definition of a democracy.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

During a speech to President Gerald Ford celebrating the 200th anniversary of American independence. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Q

Related topics