Top 122 Quotes & Sayings by James A. Garfield

Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.

If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.

I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.

The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.

A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.

The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.

Right reason is stronger than force.

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

I am a poor hater.

The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.

Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.

If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

Suicide is not a remedy.

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.

Ideas control the world.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe,--human or divine. A law is not law without coercion behind it.

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

I must do something to keep my thoughts fresh and growing. I dread nothing so much as falling into a rut and feeling myself becoming a fossil.

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct.

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it.

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.

I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.

The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.

Of course I deprecate war, but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man, - it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.

Men are tending to materialism. Houses, lands, and worldly goods attract their attention, and as a mirage lure them on to death. Christianity, on the other hand leads only the natural body to death, and for the spirit, it points out a house not built with hands, eternal in the heavens... Let me urge you to follow Him, not as the Nazarene, the Man of Galilee, the carpenter's son, but as the ever living spiritual person, full of love and compassion, who will stand by you in life and death and eternity.

I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions.

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.

Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification.

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war.

For love of country, they accepted death.

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.

The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.

The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian - the humble listener - there has been a Divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.

I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis. Conservatives have their place in the piping times of peace; but in emergencies only rugged issue men amount to much.

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. . . . If the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . . it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.

The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.

Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its luster; but when they have sunk in the earth again, the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on.