Calvin Coolidge

Public administration is honest and sound and public business is transacted on a higher plane than private business.

No system of government can stand that lacks public confidence and no progress can be made on the assumption of a false premise.

It is necessary to recognize worth as well as to condemn graft.

It is necessary to differentiate between partisan assertions and actual conditions.

Public men must expect criticism and be prepared to endure false charges from their opponents.

Each side took it for granted that public men were influenced only by improper motives and that officials of the government were seeking only their own gain and advantage without regard to the welfare of the people.

The inexperienced are prone to hold an erroneous idea of public life and its methods.

For these reasons we have no profession of politics or of public life in the sense that we have a profession of law and medicine and other learned callings.

There, ability and character come very near to being the sole requirements for success.

Every native-born American, however, is potentially a President, and it must always be remembered that the obligation to serve the State is forever binding upon all, although office is the gift of the people.

But the fact remains that office brokerage is here held in reprehensive scorn and professional office-seeking in contempt.

For centuries some seats in the British Parliament were controlled and probably sold as were commissions in the army, but that has never been the case here.

This may be in part due to a general profession of holding to the principle of Benjamin Franklin that office should neither be sought nor refused and in part to the American idea that the people choose their own officers so that public…

It has been the product of rude surroundings no less than of the most cultured environment, want and neglect have sometimes nourished it, abundance and care have failed to produce it.

And when we remember that city also meant civilization, the spurious presentment, mean and sordid, drops away and the real figure of the politician, dignified and honorable, a minister to civilization, author and finisher of government, is…

So much emphasis has been put upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.

Let us frown upon greed and selfishness, but let us also condemn envy and uncharitableness.

Let us recognize the source of these fundamental principles and not hesitate to assert them.

Have we not seen the suffering and misery which it entails upon the people?

Have we not seen what happens to industry, to transportation, to all commercial activity which we call business when profit fails?

What price could the millions, who have found the inestimable blessings of American citizenship around our great industrial centres, after coming here from lands of oppression, afford to pay to those who organized those industries?

The law that builds up the people is the law that builds up industry.

When you deny the right to a profit you deny the right of a reward to thrift and industry.

It cannot be done by law, it cannot be done by public ownership, it cannot be done by socialism.

That is the sound basis for the distribution of wealth and the only one.