Andrew Jackson Quotes

Those who hold positions and receive official stipends are incapable of the utmost in loyalty and patriotic service.

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

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.

For magistrates often changed, like hungry flies suck more blood, and as the devil rageth more because his time is short, so these magistrates, fearing soon to be recalled, are not so much bent to reform the commonwealth the fruit whereof should be reaped by the successor, as they are vigilant to enrich themselves and their followers.

Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.

The main thing is the ‘rule of corruption’: helping the horse both to race and also to get a mouthful of hay. It’s what all civil servants are secretly thinking. Our expectations for our civil servants are far too high, far too grandiose. The pressure is more than their flesh-and-blood bodies can stand.

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.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.

Public office must not be a means to profit or become rich.

The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.

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.

We are living in an era of transformation where we will all have to reckon with a number of revolutionary changes and challenges for the public sector. In the move towards globalization, the public is becoming more and more knowledgeable about their rights and requirements. As such, the need to revisit our traditional ways of offering public services is inescapable, if we want to ensure the establishment of a more caring public service.

[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.

I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal neglect of this government …. Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence.

Corruption may be one way of surmounting traditional laws or bureaucratic regulations which hamper economic expansion.

Unfaithfulness in public stations is deeply criminal …. There is too much corruption even at this infant stage of our republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not infamous.

The squandering of the public money sinks into comparative insignificance as a temptation to corruption when compared with the squandering of the public lands.

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.

One mode of the misappropriation of public funds is avoided when appointments to office, instead of being the rewards of partisan activity, are awarded to those whose efficiency promises a fair return of work for the compensation paid to them.

Bring back that better era of the republic in which, when men consecrated themselves to the public service, they utterly abnegated all selfish purposes.

The administration of government has become more complex. The opportunities for malfeasance and corruption have multiplied.

The public will never be made to believe that an appointment of a relative is ever made on the ground of merit alone, uninfluenced by family views; nor can they ever see with approbation offices, the disposal of which they entrust to their Presidents for public purposes, divided out as family property. Mr. [John] Adams degraded himself infinitely by his conduct on this subject, as General Washington had done himself the highest honor.

Government posts are for sale, preventing some poor people with abilities from serving in those positions.

Morality of society has deteriorated so much due to the government's bad policy of selling office positions