George W. Plunkitt

The most successful saloonkeepers don’t drink themselves and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own. <small>p. 77</small>

They learned how to put up a pretty good bluff—and bluff counts a lot in politics. <small>p. 18</small>

If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend. Why shouldn’t I do the same in public life? <small>p.6</small>

Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn’t isn’t likely to be popular. <small>p. 5</small>

Say, I don’t wish I was a poet, for if I was, I guess I’d be livin’ in a garret on no dollars a week instead of runnin’ a great contractin’ and transportation business which is doin’ pretty well, thank you; but, honest, now, the notion takes me sometimes to yell poetry of the red-hot-hail-glorious-land kind when I think of New York City as a state by itself. <small>p. 67</small>

Before then when a party won, its workers got everything in sight. That was somethin’ to make a man patriotic. <small>p. 14</small>

There’s the biggest kind of a difference between political looters and politicians who make a fortune out of politics by keepin’ their eyes wide open. The looter goes in for himself alone without considerin’ his organization or his city. The politician looks after his own interests, the organization’s interests, and the city’s interests all at the same time. See the distinction? <small>p. 29</small>

Big Tim made money out of liquor—sellin’ it to other people. That’s the only way to get good out of liquor. <small>p. 79</small>

I know that the civil service humbug is stuck into the constitution, too, but, as Tim Campbell said: “What’s the constitution among friends?” <small>p. 13</small>

Richard Croker used to say that tellin’ the truth and stickin’ to his friends was the political leader’s stock in trade. <small>p. 35</small>

I ain’t up on sillygisms, but I can give you some arguments that nobody can answer. <small>p. 13</small>

The man is picked out and somehow he gets to understand what’s expected of him in the way of a contribution, and he ponies up—all from gratitude to the organization that honored him, see? <small>p. 74</small>

The trouble is that the party’s been chasin’ after theories and stayin’ up nights readin’ books instead of studyin’ human nature and actin’ accordin’, as I've advised in tellin’ how to hold your district. <small>p. 88</small>

I know more than one young man in past years who worked for the ticket and was just overflowin’ with patriotism, but when he was knocked out by the civil service humbug he got to hate his country and became an Anarchist. <small>p. 11</small>

I honestly believe that drink is the greatest curse of the day, except, of course, civil service, and that it has driven more young men to ruin than anything except civil service examinations. <small>p. 78</small>