James A. Garfield Quotes
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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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I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.
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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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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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A law is not a law without coercion behind it.
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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.
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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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Suicide is not a remedy.
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I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.
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I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.
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Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.
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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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A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
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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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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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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.
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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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I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.
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Ideas control the world.
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I am a poor hater.
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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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Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
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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.'