James A. Garfield
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.Collection: Education
He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.Collection: Money
Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.Collection: War
A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.Collection: Chance
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.Collection: Truth
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.Collection: Money
All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.Collection: Wisdom
If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.Collection: Power
The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.Collection: Peace
Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.Collection: History
Ideas control the world.Collection: Imagination
A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.
If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.
The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.
I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.
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 President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.
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 law is not a law without coercion behind it.
Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.
Suicide is not a remedy.
The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
Right reason is stronger than force.
Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.
If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.
I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.
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.
I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.
I am a poor hater.
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.Collection: Ignorance
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.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Loyalty
I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.Collection: Errors
I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.Collection: Tables
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.Collection: Spiritual
I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.Collection: Trust
I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Divorce
Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.Collection: War
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.Collection: Integrity
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.Collection: Boys
The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Ignorance
The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.Collection: Atheism
Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Science