James M. Curley Quotes

No man who ever held the office of President would congratulate a friend on obtaining it. He will make one man ungrateful, and a hundred men his enemies, for every office he can bestow.

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

That is the Roman way: to give favors to the favorites.

I'm wondering how many elected figures any of us could find who do not, in the front or back of their minds, remember who does them favors, who doesn't.

I will devote none of my time to developing laws to increase my own patronage and multiply canvassers [electors] in my favor.

[Martin] Van Buren says he considers it as a misfortune when any office to be filled by him becomes vacant, and thinks patronage rather a burden than a benefit.

Patronage can result in the entrenchment of one or a few [political] parties to the exclusion of others.

When you've got a guy who's in position to influence who gets what, the potential is always there for corruption.

Politics are impossible without spoils.... You have to deal with men as they are ... you must bribe the masses with spoils.

What we affirm is that the theory which regards places in the public service as prizes to be distributed after an election, like plunder after a battle, the theory which perverts public trusts into party spoils, making public employment dependent on favor and not on proved merit, necessarily ruins the self-respect of public employees, destroys the function of party in a republic, prostitutes elections into a desperate strife for personal profit, and degrades the national character by lowering the moral tone and standard of the country.

I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service.

It is a handicap to any man to succeed a member of his own party as President. He has little patronage with which to reward his personal supporters.

The great defect in the past custom is that executive patronage has come to be regarded as the property of the party in power.

There should be no ‘jobs for the boys’. We ought to be crucified if we … select our constables from the servants of our parliamentary friends.

Can you let me know what positions you have at your disposal with which to reward deserving Democrats?

A minister’s family will expect him to do things that are impossible on a minister’s salary; they make spurious demands such as expecting them to buy a new car or take them on trips. Where does the money come from? When an honest aspirant for public office comes along, his village and his family will say, ‘No, not that one because he won’t eat and he won’t let us eat.’

Political appointees are talented, able people. They are not lepers; they are not diseased.

I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.

Throughout most of Chicago's history, the Civil Service Commission has been enmeshed in partisan politics. Thousands of city employees were given temporary appointments and kept in this status, year after year, in order to keep them loyal partisan political workers.

A President cannot call men from all parts of the country during the time between his nomination and his election, seek their advice, their counsel, their service, their cooperation in his personal behalf and in behalf of the party ... and also tell them in the same breath, to see the Secretary of War, the Attorney General and the Postmaster General about a presidential nomination.

The administration of government, like a guardianship ought to be directed to the good of those who confer, not to those who receive the trust.

Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek public employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be recognized instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief.

I favor putting the responsibility for the dispensing of patronage squarely on the organizations [parties]. Let the organizations be held strictly accountable for the endorsements. After the appointment is made the appointee ought to fit the job, so that the appointing power can rest assured that the work entrusted to him will be done right.

We all have to pay when powerful members of Congress work to bring home the bacon.

Take from the United States the appointment of postmasters and let the towns elect them, and you deprive the Federal Government of half a million defenders.