Joseph Crowley Quotes

I figured it out real early: How can you control the city unless you're the leader of your party?

I beg to present to your attention the case of Mr. Samuel Allen, a great friend of ours [The Democrats], who is in great need of a small appointment under your department for which he has applied. He would be very content with something for a time of not very high rank …. His is an entirely reliable man, and I should be personally glad if you could help him.

Is it going to be the people of Kentucky who decides who their senator's going to be, or is it going to be Mitch McConnell saying, 'This is my protege Trey; this is who your next senator's going to be.'?

I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances would be reasonably good. But I know, and acknowledge, that you have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a candidate, yourself. If, however, you are not, then I should like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.

I am not the Conservative Party's health care spokesman. I'm fond of Andrew Lansley, and I strongly support David Cameron as party leader.

Two kinds of men generally best succeed in political life; men of no principle, but of great talent; and men of no talent, but of one principle - that of obedience to their superiors.

If it's necessary to join a caucus and get a committee assignment, I'll do it.

There are so many societies, so many churches, so many -isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career.

There is little or no point being chair of the Labour Party and being ignored when engaging with Labour ministers when you're trying to articulate something that affects ordinary people in society.

Your first six months in the Senate, you spend a lot of time wondering how the hell you got here. After that, you look around at your colleagues and wonder how the hell any of them got here.

The success of any executive measure must now be bought by the use of political patronage in influencing the action of legislators.

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.

I don't think there has have ever been a better friend of the Republican party than Bill Clinton. He has done more than anyone can be expected to do.

When you buy a Presidential candidate, you buy his party and you buy 20,000 appointees you never heard of.

During [President Martin Van Buren's] stay in New York he has visited most of the public places in the constant custody of a set of men who are not (unless he has greatly changed) the sort of folks he would have chosen for his associates; but party politics, like poverty, bring men "acquainted with strange bedfellows.

Bureaucrats understand who their real masters are. Their real masters are not their nominal department heads. The real powers are the chairmen on Capitol Hill.

Wilbur Mills knows that he was chairman of Ways and Means before I got here and that he'll still be chairman after I've gone—and he knows I know it.

He survived politically for forty years. No matter what the issue was, it did not concern him. He knew that if he could call a man’s name in a crowd, shake hands with him and ask him about his wife and children, whose names were also in the little book, he had that man’s vote.

The military pork barrel spreads special privilege far beyond the confines of the arms contractors; it directly creates at least two million industrial jobs, every holder of which is all too dependent for his well-being on the well-being of the party oligarchs and the success of their corrupt policies. By virtue of the military budget, a large number of ordinary citizens have been given a direct stake in corrupt power.

No man ever exercised less influence in the Senate or the House of Representatives than he, but no man ever exercised more power as a political leader.

The leaders of a party, or those who are so called, have but little sway over their followers, particularly when not in Government, and when they have it not in their power to threaten them with any very serious consequences

If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

If Olympia Snow and I were talking together on the floor of the House, Newt Gingrich would send his boys over to tell her to get back to the Republican side of the aisle.

Politics is a game of friends.

If you are the executive, you're probably going to have more of an impact than if you're one of a hundred members of the Senate, certainly one of 435 members of the House.