Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Individuals move and shift from one party to another simply on their aspirations for office.
A most wretched custom is our electioneering and scrambling for office. Misserima omnimo est ambitio honorumque contentio.
Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire to stay in office and not by any philosophy that might justify their doing so.
Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office seeking. Men of good character and impulse are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness. Disappointment makes them unjust to the last degree.
The passion for office among members of Congress is very great, if not absolutely disreputable, and greatly embarrasses the operations of the Government. They create offices by their own votes and then seek to fill them themselves.
For the sake of advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.
I ran for attorney general to be attorney general.
This office seeking is a disease. It is even catching.
I have no desire to run for public office.
I'm not particularly interested in running for president.
I've never believed in running for office so you can eventually run for some other office.
I thought I could make a difference, so I ran for office.
Look what's happened to Barack Obama over the last two years or George Bush for eight. It's a blood sport. But at some point I may feel the need to run for office again.
In the early period of American History the office sought the man. Today various kinds of people seek the office.
It can be really lonely running for office, especially if you've never done it before and especially when all the normal channels of power are basically closed to you.
What in the world had Grover Cleveland done? Will you tell me? You give it up? I have been looking for six weeks for a Democrat who could tell me what Cleveland has done for the good of his country and for the benefit of the people, but I have not found him.... He says himself...that two-thirds of his time has been uselessly spent with Democrats who want office.... Now he has been so occupied in that way that he has not done anything else.
The greatest beggar and the most troublesome of all the office seekers during my Administration was General Harrison.
I didn't run to be pope. I ran to be mayor.
Responding to criticism of his flamboyant personal lifestyle:
I've never sought elected office since I was a senior class president in high school.
The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn’t have it, either. Government office should be received like a child’s Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.
Every member of my family knows that running for office is a personal decision.
Protestations of indifference to higher office are hard to take seriously when the 'non-candidate' is busily engaged in testing the waters.
Surely one can be a dissident without intending to run for a higher public office.