James A. Garfield Quotes

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

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

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

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

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

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

Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.

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

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas control the world.

I am a poor hater.

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

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.

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

Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.

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

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

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

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