Patronage System Quotes

Concentration of power in a political machine is bad..

PUBLIC SERVANT: Persons chosen by the people to distribute the graft.

In 44 states, the [parole] board is wholly appointed by the governor, and the well-paid positions can become gifts for former aides and political allies. While some state laws require basic qualifications, these statutes are often vaguely worded, with language that is easily sidestepped. Many states have no minimum requirements at all.

No man should have a political office because he wants a job.

The civil list is so large that a personal knowledge of any large number of the applicants is impossible. The President must rely upon the representations of others, and these are often made inconsiderately and without any just sense of responsibility.

No man who ever held the office of President would congratulate a friend on obtaining it. He will make one man ungrateful, and a hundred men his enemies, for every office he can bestow.

Politics are impossible without spoils.... You have to deal with men as they are ... you must bribe the masses with spoils.

The great defect in the past custom is that executive patronage has come to be regarded as the property of the party in power.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

I feel like the traditional patron system meant that you would kiss the ass of one rich person and then hide all of the financial goings-on of your work, and you could pretend you were pure.

[Martin] Van Buren says he considers it as a misfortune when any office to be filled by him becomes vacant, and thinks patronage rather a burden than a benefit.

Every time you do a favor for a constituent, you make nine enemies and one ingrate.

A crowd of persons came in as soon as my office was opened. Among them were several ladies who called to pay their respects. None who called had any business of more importance than an ardent desire to serve their country, provided they could be appointed to a good office. As I has none of these to dispose of, they were, of course, disappointed.

The kind of system Kickstarter uses has been used for hundreds of years. Unlike Medici-style patronage, where the richest people in town give large amounts of money, Kickstarter's system relies on the general public for funding projects, and rewards those backers.

The government in Turkey, which represents the powerful, traditionalist mass, is very comfortable creating policies tailored only for their supporters.

Every President does it. It goes back to George Washington. I can’t say that past Administrations have asked the same questions, but the end result is the same—you put people on boards that you want.

I will devote none of my time to developing laws to increase my own patronage and multiply canvassers [electors] in my favor.

Money has come to play a very bad role in the ANC; people's votes are bought, and patronage has become the order of the day. All those deviant tendencies need to be curbed.

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States.

Bush the father did well in placing his sons as governors and did not forget to pass on the expertise in fraud from the leaders of the region to Florida to use it in critical moments.

This town was built on nepotism.

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.

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.

The United States naval and military academies are not referred to … because access to them is not free. A thoroughly vicious system of selecting the candidates for admission to these schools annuls the influence they might otherwise exert upon technical education in this country. A patron, and not a good previous training, being the essential requisite