John Quincy Adams Quotes

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

Lincoln owes a higher duty to the country…than to fritter away the priceless opportunities of the Presidency in listening to the appeals of competing office—hunters.

[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.

It is a handicap to any man to succeed a member of his own party as President. He has little patronage with which to reward his personal supporters.

Lincoln left the bulk of the nominations for presidential as well as for subordinate offices to his political friends and advisors. The military forces as well as the civilian establishment were exploited freely, and political generals were notoriously numerous. With more offices at his disposal than any president up to that time, … Lincoln appears to have used — or permitted the use of — the appointing power at his command as deliberately as they could have been used for practical, and usually partisan, political purposes.

There should be no ‘jobs for the boys’. We ought to be crucified if we … select our constables from the servants of our parliamentary friends.

Can you let me know what positions you have at your disposal with which to reward deserving Democrats?

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.

[Political] offices are as acceptable here as elsewhere, and whenever a man cast a longing eye on them, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

About one-half of the members of Congress are seekers for office at the nomination of the President. Of the remainder, at least one-half have some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives.

Throughout most of Chicago's history, the Civil Service Commission has been enmeshed in partisan politics. Thousands of city employees were given temporary appointments and kept in this status, year after year, in order to keep them loyal partisan political workers.

A President cannot call men from all parts of the country during the time between his nomination and his election, seek their advice, their counsel, their service, their cooperation in his personal behalf and in behalf of the party ... and also tell them in the same breath, to see the Secretary of War, the Attorney General and the Postmaster General about a presidential nomination.

The damned everlasting clatter for offices makes me feel like resigning.

I favor putting the responsibility for the dispensing of patronage squarely on the organizations [parties]. Let the organizations be held strictly accountable for the endorsements. After the appointment is made the appointee ought to fit the job, so that the appointing power can rest assured that the work entrusted to him will be done right.

What we called the Civil Service was, in the main, merely a mass of Republican political appointees frozen into office by act of Congress.

Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition.

I shall at all times be ready to recognize the paramount claims of the soldiers of the nation in the disposition of public trusts [patronage].

No man who ever held the office of President would ever congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

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.

Before I was elected President I thought the chief pleasure of it would be to give honors and offices to old friends. But you know you can't do that when you're President of the United States; you have to get the best men.

Take from the United States the appointment of postmasters and let the towns elect them, and you deprive the Federal Government of half a million defenders.

Whenever I form a ministry, the Carleton Club was like the Zoological Gardens at feeding time.

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.

Every man who has been in office a few years believes he has a life estate in it.

Polk's appointments all in all are the most damnable set that was ever made by any President since the government was organized.... He has a set of interested parasites around him, who flatter him until he does not know himself. He seems to be acting upon the principle of hanging an old friend for the purpose of making two new ones.... There is one thing I will say ... I never betrayed a friend or [was] guilty of the black sin of ingratitude. I fear Mr. Polk cannot say as much.