I’m superstitious about making candidate jokes on election day because of the famous admonition: "The problem with political jokes is they get elected."

So instead I’ll do something different and try to inspire you to the polls with a "flASHback" on my favorite quotes about politics:

» "My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference." — Harry S Truman

» "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedy." — Ernest Benn

» "Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." — Laurence J. Peter

» "A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen." — Sir Winston Churchill

» "A fool and his money are soon elected." — Will Rogers

» "Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing." — Bernard Baruch

» "The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly,’ meaning ‘many,’ and the word ‘ticks,’ meaning ‘bloodsucking parasites.’" — Larry Hardiman

» "Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects." — Lester B. Pearson

» "The mistake a lot of politicians make is in forgetting they’ve been appointed and thinking they’ve been anointed." — Claude D. Pepper

» "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." — John Kenneth Galbraith

» "The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces." — Maureen Murphy

» "Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power." — George Bernard Shaw

» "In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap." — Napoleon Bonaparte

» "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." — H.L. Mencken

» "Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other." — Oscar Ameringer

» "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." — P. J. O’Rourke

» "I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican." — Dan Quayle

» "I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat!" — Will Rogers

So go vote. If you’re still thinking about skipping it, consider this warning from Plato: "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

David Shapiro can be reached at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.