John Quincy Adams Quotes

I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service.

Rarely do political contributions lead to direct quid pro quo transactions - donations for votes - and those that cross this line normally get caught.

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.

It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

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.

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

Farm subsidies are bribes for votes.

Today’s expensive election campaigns are entrenching a culture of patronage [in Indonesia].

During the 1937 congressional election campaign, Johnson's group probably paid $5,000 to Elliott Roosevelt, one of Franklin Roosevelt's sons, for a telegram in which Elliott suggested that the Roosevelt family favored Lyndon Johnson.

No one gives away their vote for free if somebody will pay for it.

Political machines seek to perpetuate themselves by all sorts of tricks. They sidetrack, channelize and emasculate the popular will

Patronage cements parties. Those caviling against corruption are principally moralistic muckrakers who were never closely allied to the entrepreneurial spirit

Farmers who are legislators are the easiest to buy and seduce.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

The host of contractors, speculators, stockjobbers, and lobby members which haunt the halls of Congress, all desirous ... to get their arm into the public treasury, are sufficient to alarm every friend of this country. Their progress must be arrested.

I have been around long enough to know that when large amounts of money are donated to politicians, something besides good government is expected in return.

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.

... he [Thomas E. Dewey] is a political streetwalker accosting men with "come home with me dear.

I am against government by crony.

I could not afford to hang men for votes.

The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections.

There once was a time when people chose their congressmen. Now congressmen choose their people.

The spree of big money campaigning—and the corruption that goes with it—seems guaranteed to worsen …. Campaign money handlers will keep pushing the limits wherever and however they can—and the integrity of our electoral system will pay the price.

If you’re the majority party, you want to use dollars to buy votes. Ideology is not relevant.