Martin Farquhar Tupper Quotes

Win and keep the confidence of your leader. Never refuse or quash schemes he puts forward: but ensure that they are put forward in the first instance privately to you. Always approve them, and after praise modify them insensibly causing the suggestions to come from him, until they are in accord with your own opinion. When you attain this point, hold him to it, keep a tight grip of his ideas, and push him forward as firmly as possible, but secretly so that no one but himself (and he not too clearly) is aware of your pressure.

It is said that gifts persuade even the gods.

I'll do anything for $50. People are always trying to get me to do dumb things. The possibilities are endless.

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.

There is no reason for a lobbyist to give us gifts. They are supposed to give us information.

When a public official accepts a gift he dissolves the pearl of independence in the vinegar of obligation.

Gifts can incline great hearts.

I've been very successful in business and I owe it all to politics.

I have never seen such lobbying before as we have had in the last few weeks and such crookedness and complicity among members [of congress].

One usually obtains [diplomatic] influence through the press, and that costs money ... or through the purchase of prominent ... parliamentarians, for which one also needs a great deal of cash.

At home when people go to lawmakers and induce them with trips and gifts and so on to pass legislation, it's called corruption. But in the U.S. it's actually a profession called lobbying!

Everyone has a price, the important thing is to find out that price

You dangle a little bit of change in front of somebody and what do they do? They change right up like a chameleon.

Money. You don't know where it's been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks!

The key was disclosure, and nobody has ever raised a concern that anybody who contributed, whether a campaign contributor or a gift giver, ever got anything for it.

When sincerity fails, the offer of money usually works.

Presents, believe me, seduce both men and gods.

Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.

It's not who you know, it's who you blow. I don't have a hole in my jeans for nothing.

The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got.

We're talking tens of thousands, millions, nobody gives you that kind of money without an expectation for it. It has to be paid back somehow. You pay it back with policy.

Petitions, not sweetened with gold, are but unsavory and oft refused; or, if received, are pocketed, not read.

The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution?

Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art.