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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 298
AUTHOR: Henry Fountain Ashurst (1874–1962)
QUOTATION: You send me to Washington to represent you in the senate. But you do not send me there because you are interested in grave questions of national or international policy. When I come back to Arizona, you never ask me any questions about such policies; instead you ask me: “What about my pension?” or “What about that job for my son?” I am not in Washington as a statesman. I am there as a very well paid messenger boy doing your errands. My chief occupation is going around with a forked stick picking up little fragments of patronage for my constituents.
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to Senator HENRY FOUNTAIN ASHURST.—Thomas C. Donnelly, Rocky Mountain Politics, p. 283 (1940). Unverified.
SUBJECTS: Congressmen