James A. Garfield Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Right reason is stronger than force.

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

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.

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

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

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

I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

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

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

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

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

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.

For love of country, they accepted death.

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.

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.

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.

It is not right or manly to lie even about Satan.

The right of private judgment is absolute in every American citizen.

[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.

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

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.

In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.

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

Suicide is not a remedy

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

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

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

Ideas control the world.

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