“Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano.”

— John Oliver

" Brexit III https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaBQfSAVt0s&t=870" (ff. 0:14:30), February 17, 2019; on Brexit. <br class="br">Last Week Tonight (2014&ndash;present)

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 "Britain is basically Pompeii if Pompeii had voted for the volcano." by John Oliver?

John Oliver16

English comedian 1977

Related quotes

“People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007).
2000s

“In the Labour movement they said they would have no truck with coalition, but if Britain stayed in the EEC then for decades to come they would be enmeshed in various forms of coalition government than ever before. That was the most important issue of all. If in Britain the people did not like a government they could vote it out of office, but they had no similar recourse in the case of the institutions of the EEC, which had supreme powers and which were undemocratic.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Speech to the Labour Party conference on Britain's membership of the EEC (26 April 1975), quoted in The Times (28 April 1975), p. 4
1970s

“We made a mistake lowering the voting age to 18. I think it happened basically out of guilt.”

Chris Shays (1945) American politician

“He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (39) “Better To Be a Volcano”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

“This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)
Context: In 1957, as the leader of the majority in the United States Senate, speaking in support of legislation to guarantee the right of all men to vote, I said, "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."