George Washington Plunkitt Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

View all George Washington Plunkitt Quotes
The Irish, above all people in the world, hates a traitor.

George Washington Plunkitt
Say, ain't some of the papers awful gullible about politics?

George Washington Plunkitt
Men ain't in politics for nothin'. They want to get somethin' out of it.

George Washington Plunkitt
You can't be patriotic on a salary that just keeps the wolf from the door.

George Washington Plunkitt
What's the use of havin' ill-smellin' gashouses if there's no votes in them?

George Washington Plunkitt
The men who rule have practiced keepin' their tongues still, not exercisin' them.

George Washington Plunkitt
I ain't up on sillygisms, but I can give you some arguments that nobody can answer.

George Washington Plunkitt
They learned how to put up a pretty good bluff—and bluff counts a lot in politics.

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

George Washington Plunkitt
This civil service law is the biggest fraud of the age. It is the curse of the nation.

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 railroad is a great public institution, and I was never an enemy of public institutions.

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

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

George Washington Plunkitt
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?

George Washington Plunkitt
Richard Croker used to say that tellin' the truth and stickin' to his friends was the political leader's stock in trade.

George Washington Plunkitt
The Democratic party of the nation ain't dead, though it's been givin' a lifelike imitation of a corpse for several years.

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 time is comin' and though I'm no youngster, I may see it, when New York City will break away from the State and become a state itself.

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
I want to add that no matter how well you learn to play the political game, you won't make a lastin' success of it if you're a drinkin' man.

George Washington Plunkitt
The most successful saloonkeepers don't drink themselves and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own.

George Washington Plunkitt
Of course, the day may come when we'll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn't come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 A.M. today.

George Washington Plunkitt
There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': 'I seen my opportunities and I took 'em.'

George Washington Plunkitt
I know it's an awful temptation, the hankerin' to show off your learnin'. I've felt it myself, but I always resist it. I know the awful consequences.

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
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
Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft.

George Washington Plunkitt
I rope them all in by givin' them opportunities to show themselves off. I don't trouble them with political arguments. I just study human nature and act accordin'.

George Washington Plunkitt