James A. Garfield Quotes
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I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.
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Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
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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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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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I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.
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A law is not a law without coercion behind it.
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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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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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I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.
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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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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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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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Suicide is not a remedy.
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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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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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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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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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A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
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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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Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
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I am a poor hater.
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No federal legislation prior to 1812 placed any restriction on the right of suffrage in consequence of the color of the citizen. From 1789 to 1812 Congress passed ten separate laws establishing new Territories. In all these, freedom, and not color, was the basis of suffrage.
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The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.