George W. Plunkitt Quotes

New York State Senator

George Washington Plunkitt (17 November 1842 – November 19, 1924) was a New York State Senator and, as a member of Tammany Hall, a ward boss for the Fifteenth Assembly District.

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Alternative Names: George Washington Plunkitt

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Another kind of honest graft. Tammany has raised a good many salaries. There was an awful howl by the reformers, but don’t you know that Tammany gains ten votes for every one it lost by salary raisin’? p. 6

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? p. 74

Putin’ on style don’t pay in politics. p. 50

He eats corned beef and kosher meat with equal nonchalance, and it’s all the same to him whether he takes off his hat in the church or pulls it down over his ears in the synagogue. p. 48

The men who rule have practiced keepin’ their tongues still, not exercisin’ them. p. 8

The name-parted-in-the-middle aristocrats act in just the same way. They don’t want to be annoyed with firecrackers and the Declaration of Independence, and when they see the Fourth comin’ they hustle off to the woods like my dog. p. 71

Say, ain’t some of the papers awful gullible about politics? p. 59

Politics is as much a regular business as the grocery or the dry-goods or the drug business. You've got to be trained up to it or you're sure to fail. p. 19

Once let a man grow up amidst Brooklyn’s cobblestones, with the odor of Newton Creek and Gowanus Canal ever in his nostrils, and there’s no place in the world for him except Brooklyn. p. 41

The Irish, above all people in the world, hates a traitor. p. 35

It’s because a Brooklynite is a natural-born hayseed, and can never become a real New Yorker. p. 41

Men ain’t in politics for nothin’. They want to get somethin’ out of it. p. 37

The politicians who make a lastin’ success in politics are the men who are always loyal to their friends, even up to the gate of State prison, if necessary; men who keep their promises and never lie. p. 35

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

I've been studyin’ the political game for forty-five years, and I don’t know it all yet. I’m learnin’ somethin’ all the time. How, then, can you expect what they call “business men” to turn into politics all at once and make a success of it? p. 19

George W. Plunkitt Quotes

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