“The successful public administrator is curious about everything. Perhaps you don't see just why it is that a public administrator should go about continually asking questions of everything and everybody about him. Well, let us take one functional phase of public administration in a municipal government.
One of the best administrators that I ever knew had a great curiosity about garbage. He was the head of the refuse disposal department of the District of Columbia. He asked all sorts of questions of the garbage cans and the ash cans and trash barrels, because in that city we imposed upon the householders a three way system of refuse removal. You couldn't put your trash and your garbage and your ashes all in one container, you had to have three containers, and also, at that particular time, the collectors were divided into three different crews. So this man with this curiosity made a study of what he found in the rubbish cans, and the results. If that study were plotted on a map, and as the result of the study of that map the routings were rearranged, the whole system of garbage collection was rearranged; not only of collection, but of disposal.”

— Louis Brownlow

Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 6-7; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

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Louis Brownlow 10

American mayor 1879–1963

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Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 6 ; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

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Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Attributed by an unnamed "distinguished officer of the United States Government" in the Sixth Report of the American Temperance Society, May, 1833, pp. 10-11 http://books.google.com/books?id=h_c0wbAOQ5kC&pg=PA237&dq=%22The+habit+of+using+ardent+spirit%22.
Later variant: Were I to commence my administration again,... the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, "Does he use ardent spirits?"
Attributed