George Washington Plunkitt Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

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

George Washington Plunkitt
Big Tim made money out of liquor—sellin' it to other people. That's the only way to get good out of liquor.

George Washington Plunkitt
Who is better fitted to run the railroads and the gas plants and the ferries than the men who make a business of lookin' after the interests of the city?

George Washington Plunkitt
As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into such dirty business, when there is so much honest graft lyin' around when they are in power?

George Washington Plunkitt
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?

George Washington Plunkitt
It's because a Brooklynite is a natural-born hayseed, and can never become a real New Yorker.

George Washington Plunkitt
You can't study human nature in books. Books is a hindrance more than anything else.

George Washington Plunkitt
Ought these good people be subjected to the immoral influence of money taken from the saloon tainted money? Out of respect for the tender consciences of these pious people, the Raines law ought to exempt them from all contamination from the plunder that comes from the saloon traffic. Say, mark that sarcastic. Some people who ain't used to fine sarcasm might think I meant it.

George Washington Plunkitt
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'?

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn't isn't likely to be popular.

George Washington Plunkitt
The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for a man with a political pull, there's no excuse for stealin' a cent.

George Washington Plunkitt
The boys and men don't get excited any more when they see a United States flag or hear The Star-Spangled Banner. They don't care no more for firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And why should they? What is there in it for them?

George Washington Plunkitt
That's the a, b, c of politics. It ain't easy work to get up to q and z. You have to give nearly all your time and attention to it.

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
How nice it is for the people to feel that they can get up in the mornin' without bein' afraid of seein' in the papers that the Commissioner of Water Supply has sandbagged the Dock Commissioner, and that the Mayor and heads of the departments have been taken to the police court as witnesses!

George Washington Plunkitt
Most of the leaders are plain American citizens, of the people and near to the people, and they have all the education they need to whip the dudes who part their name in the middle and to run the City Government.

George Washington Plunkitt
Oh, yes, that is a good way to do up the so-called bosses, but have you ever thought what would become of the country if the bosses were put out of business, and their places were taken by a lot of cart-tail orators and college graduates? It would mean chaos.

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
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.

George Washington Plunkitt
Just remember that there's thirty-five Assembly districts in New York County, and thirty-six district leaders reachin' out for the Tammany dough-bag for somethin' to keep up the patriotism of ten thousand workers, and you wouldn't wonder that the cry for more, more, is goin' up from every district organization now and forevermore. Amen.

George Washington Plunkitt
Some young men think they can learn how to be successful in politics from books, and they cram their heads with all sorts of college rot. They couldn't make a bigger mistake.

George Washington Plunkitt
Before then when a party won, its workers got everything in sight. That was somethin' to make a man patriotic.

George Washington Plunkitt
I know that the civil service humbug is stuck into the constitution, too, but, as Tim Campbell said: What's the constitution among friends?

George Washington Plunkitt
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?

George Washington Plunkitt
Consolidation didn't make him a New Yorker, and nothin' on earth can. A man born in Germany can settle down and become a good New Yorker. So can an Irishman; in fact, the first word an Irish boy learns in the old country is New York, and when he grows up and comes here, he is at home right away. Even a Jap or a Chinaman can become a New Yorker, but a Brooklynite never can.

George Washington Plunkitt
Isn't it enough to make a man sour on his country when he wants to serve it and won't be allowed unless he answers a lot of fool questions about the number of cubic inches of water in the Atlantic and the quality of sand in the Sahara desert?

George Washington Plunkitt
Then will return the good old times, when our district leaders could have nice comfortable primary elections at some place selected by themselves and let in only men that they approved of as good Democrats.

George Washington Plunkitt