Kin Hubbard Quotes

Patronage is almost a wicked word. By itself it could well-nigh defeat democracy.

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.

Every single administration in American political history has put cronies and pals and donors into political positions. But normally those people become the ambassador to Liechtenstein or the deputy undersecretary of commerce.

I'm rather cynical about the way the honours system is used, frankly. A whole lot of the honours system is used for political purposes by the government in power.

I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.

After your first victory as New York Governor you gave jobs worth $3,000 to $20,000 per year to your friends and compatriots, and I returned to my garret and my crust, and my desperate battle with pecuniary obligations.

All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainty, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post offices land offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.

The greatest beggar and the most troublesome of all the office seekers during my Administration was General Harrison.

In politics there are very few self-made men—most are machine-made.

It is too early to tell where Mobutu will draw the line between corruption and the ‘normal’ use of payments and patronage to facilitate operations.

One had sown the seeds of corruption, and the other watered and nurtured it. Both the TDP and Congress have played their bit in patronising Satyam.

A politician's goal is always to manipulate public debate. I think there are some politicians with higher goals. But all of them get corrupted by power.

But I don't need to use politics as a way of making money.

An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure; a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.

The police in Punjab has been politicised; it has become a wing of the Akali Dal.

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.

Our tribunals — unlike those in the United States — have been traditionally subordinated to political power. Mexico has a history of corrupt elections where the will of the people has been subverted by the wealthy and powerful.

Eventually, money wins in politics.

There can be no complete and permanent reform of the civil service until public opinion emancipates congressmen from all control and influence over government patronage ... No proper legislation is to be expected as long as members of Congress are engaged in procuring offices for their constituents

Patronage cements parties. Those caviling against corruption are principally moralistic muckrakers who were never closely allied to the entrepreneurial spirit

For the sake of advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.

The host of contractors, speculators, stockjobbers, and lobby members which haunt the halls of Congress, all desirous ... to get their arm into the public treasury, are sufficient to alarm every friend of this country. Their progress must be arrested.

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.

Government runs by clout. That's how it runs, by clout.

The Mexican government has been corrupt for 140 years.