James A. Garfield famous quotes

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Ignorance #Character #People

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Ignorance #Character #Intelligent

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Country #Money #Powerful

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

#War #Ideas #Brutality

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

#Work #Skills #Presidential

The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.
-- James A. Garfield

#History #Actors #Lessons

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

#Country #Money #Democracy

I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.
-- James A. Garfield

#Errors #Agitation #Politics

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Divorce #Organization #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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Christian #Running #Song

For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do every thing.
-- James A. Garfield

#Revenge #Looks #Vengeance

If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.
-- James A. Garfield

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.
-- James A. Garfield

#Money

Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
-- James A. Garfield

#Passion #Justice #Goodwill

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

#Sunshine #Government #People

Right reason is stronger than force.
-- James A. Garfield

#Stronger #Reason #Force

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
-- James A. Garfield

#Teacher #Encouragement #Appreciation

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

#Men #Bravery #Devil

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

#Love #Life #Motivational

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
-- James A. Garfield

#Inspirational #Humor #Good Luck

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

#Education #Teacher #Teaching

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Swimming #Men #Poverty

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

#Patriotic #Two #Political

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Fall #Feelings #Progress

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

#Mean #Men #Succeed

For the love of country they accepted death.
-- James A. Garfield

#Country #Memorial Day #Memorial

We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.
-- James A. Garfield

#Father #Intelligent #Government

Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
-- James A. Garfield

#Effort #World #This World

Ideas control the world.
-- James A. Garfield

#Ideas #World

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Boys #Feelings #Coats

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Integrity #Men #Brave

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

#Men #Risk #Succeed

Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.
-- James A. Garfield

#America #United States #Giants

God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!
-- James A. Garfield

#Government #Reign #Still Life

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.
-- James A. Garfield

#United States #States #United

To all our means of culture is added the powerful incentive to personal ambition, no post of honor is so high but the poorest may hope to reach it.
-- James A. Garfield

#Powerful #Mean #Ambition

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

#Patriotic #People #Soul

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

#War #Home #Doors

In my judgment, while it is the duty of Congress to respect to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen ... not any ecclesiastical organization can be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the national government.
-- James A. Garfield

#Religious #Organization #Government

[The President is] the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.
-- James A. Garfield

#Thinking #People #Political

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

#Presidential #Trouble #Worst

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

#Men #Events #Doctrine

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

#Hippie #Law #Bases

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Loyalty #Running #Kindness

I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'
-- James A. Garfield

#Ignorance #Years #Battle

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

#Men #Planning

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
-- James A. Garfield

#Government #People #Diversity

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.
-- James A. Garfield

#Accomplished #Radical #Crisis

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.
-- James A. Garfield

#Moving #Men #Sea

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

#Believe #Personality #Suffering

Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics.
-- James A. Garfield

#Law #Statistics #Modern

For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.
-- James A. Garfield

#Inspirational Life #Men #Honor

Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.
-- James A. Garfield

#Ignorance #Dark #Light

Swift defined observation to be an old man's memory.
-- James A. Garfield

#Memories #Men #Old Man

The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a comtempt for mere external show
-- James A. Garfield

#Doubt #Ability #Possession

The prosperity which now prevails is without parallel in our history. Fruitful seasons have done much to secure it, but they have not done all. The preservation of the public credit and the resumption of specie payments, so successfully attained by the Administration of my predecessors, have enabled our people to secure the blessings which the seasons brought.
-- James A. Garfield

#Money #Blessing #People

The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others.
-- James A. Garfield

#Darkness #Energy #Throwing

I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.
-- James A. Garfield

#Trust #Believe #Hands

History is but the unrolled scroll of prophecy.
-- James A. Garfield

#Historical #Prophecy

I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.
-- James A. Garfield

#Tables #Vote #Multiplication

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

#Hard Times #Pathways #Panic

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Men #Issues #Emergencies

My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?
-- James A. Garfield

#Men #Want #Should

It is not part of the functions of the national government to find employment for people and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for this purpose, we should be taxing forty millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.
-- James A. Garfield

#Government #People #Employment

The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.
-- James A. Garfield

#Atheism #Church #Taxation

I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.
-- James A. Garfield

#Numbers #Worry #Receiving

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.
-- James A. Garfield

#Character #People #Responsible

Suicide is not a remedy
-- James A. Garfield

#Suicide #Remedy

Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.
-- James A. Garfield

#Reality #Liberty #Tangible

They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.
-- James A. Garfield

#Patriotic #Joints #Ruts

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe-that the world is a cosmos and a chaos.
-- James A. Garfield

#Believe #Order #Cosmos

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

#Blood #Slavery #May

[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.
-- James A. Garfield

#Stars #Character #Rocks

A law is not a law without coercion behind it....
-- James A. Garfield

#Law #Coercion #Behinds

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

#Philosophy #Teaching #Eye

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Fall #Patriotic #Organization

The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.
-- James A. Garfield

#Country #Money #Withdrawal

Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
-- James A. Garfield

#Ideas #Feet #Wool

When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope to be in a better temper to legislate.
-- James A. Garfield

#Presidential #Shadow #Election

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

#College #Students #Ends

Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear, like owls and bats, before the light of day.
-- James A. Garfield

#Light #Darkness #Abuse

The divorce between church and state should be absolute.
-- James A. Garfield

#Divorce #Church #States

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.
-- James A. Garfield

#Country #War #Party

[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.
-- James A. Garfield

#School #People #Support

The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar data obtained by other nations.
-- James A. Garfield

#Country #Science #Data

No man can make a speech alone. It is the great human power that strikes up from a thousand minds that acts upon him, and makes the speech.
-- James A. Garfield

#Men #Mind #Speech

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.
-- James A. Garfield

#Brotherhood #Links #Common

Tortured for the Republic.
-- James A. Garfield

#Republic #Last Words