Politics & Power Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields turns democracy into a heckler’s routine: the ballot box isn’t a place for devotion, it’s a place to register disgust. “I never vote for anyone” is an absolutist setup, a flat refusal of the sentimental civic script where citizens pick heroes and believe in platforms. The punchline is the reversal that isn’t really a reversal at all: “I always vote against.” Politics, in this view, is less romance than pest control.

The intent is comic, but not cozy. Fields is selling a persona - misanthropic, allergic to uplift, suspicious of every human institution that asks for faith. The humor works because it weaponizes a familiar feeling (none of these people deserve it) into a tidy principle. It’s cynicism with rhythm: short clauses, simple words, the kind of bluntness that sounds like wisdom when you’re tired.

The subtext is also a critique of how politics markets itself. Candidates want affirmative love; Fields insists most voters operate in the negative, choosing the least intolerable option, rationalizing compromise as conscience. He’s not describing an ideal electorate; he’s describing an electorate as it often behaves, then daring you to admit it.

Context matters: Fields came up in an era of machine politics, the Great Depression, and rising distrust in institutions - a period when “for” could feel like a sucker’s bet. Even now, the line survives because it flatters the listener’s skepticism while quietly indicting it: if everyone votes against, nobody builds anything, they just keep removing the latest villain.