James A. Garfield Quotes
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The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
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I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
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The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
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I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.
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Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.
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Mister Speaker, I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendent genius, whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud can obscure.
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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.
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It is a sad place, young man, for you to put your young life into. It is to me far more like a graveyard than like a camp for the living. Look at it! It is billowed all over with the graves of dead issues, of buried opinions, of exploded theories, of disgraced doctrines.
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The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.
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To his chief of staff, David G. Swaim Oh Swaim, there is a pain here. Swaim, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!
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The House has today resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Government of the United States... Nothing less than the total subversion of this government.
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A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
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I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.
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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.
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Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.
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I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.
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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.
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The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.
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Garfield: 'Old boy! Do you think my name will have a place in human history?' Rockwell: 'Yes, a grand one, but a grander one in human hearts. Old fellow, you mustn’t talk in that way. You have a great work yet to perform.' Garfield: 'No. My work is done.'
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I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.
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Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this government; you have it in your power, by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Government.
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I am a poor hater.
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I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.
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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.