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James A. Garfield

113 quotes

“I would rather be beaten in Right than succeed in Wrong.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Maxims of James Abram Garfield (1880), compiled by William Ralston Balch, p. 1
“Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself,— that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elements of Success", as published in President Garfield and education: Hiram college memorial (1882), compiled by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 327
“Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; 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 for himself.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elements of Success", as published in President Garfield and education. Hiram college memorial (1882), compiled by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 331
“The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 124
“I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 595
“I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being A Cyclopedia Of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 327
“The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Garfield of Ohio : The Available Man (1970) by John M. Tyler
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Garfield of Ohio : The Available Man (1970) by John M. Tyler
“I have had many troubles, but the worst of them never came.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Power of Choice (2007) by Joyce Guccione, p. 49
“The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian — the humble listener — there has been a Divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1856 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Province of History (c. 1856), Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 620
“We do not even inquire whether a black man is a rebel in arms, or not, if he is black, be he friend or foe, he is thought best kept at a distance. It is hardly possible God will let us succeed while such enormities are practiced.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Regarding slavery (1862), as quoted in Garfield: A Biography (1978), by Allan Peskin, p. 145
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in New York City (15 April 1865) on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, as reported in John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield (1882 memorial edition), p. 194. Several biographers …
“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Colonel A. F. Rockwell (13 August 1866)
“I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not be a fool, which, if I may judge by the exhibitions around me, is a matter of no small difficulty.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In a letter to Burke Aaron Hinsdale (1 January 1867); quoted in The Life of Gen. James A. Garfield (1880) by Jonas Mills Bundy, p. 77
“If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: College Education," an address before the Literary the Eclectic Institute (June 1867), in President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial (1881) by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 312
“If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Commissioner Wells's Report. Remarks made in the House of Representatives, January 1869. Quoted in
“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elements of Success," Speech at Spencerian Business College, Washington, D.C. (29 July 1869); in President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial (1881) by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 326
“The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to H. N. Eldridge (12 December 1869) as quoted in Garfield (1978) by Allen Peskin, Ch. 13
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of the Revolution gave birth.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another patriotic speaker thus justly sums up his conclusions: 'We must choose between two results. With these four millions of negroes, either you must have four millions of disfranchised, disarmed, untaught, landless, thriftless, non-producing, non-consuming, degraded men; or else you must have four millions of landholding, industrious, arms-bearing, and voting population. Choose between these two!'”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is related in ancient fable that one of the gods, dissatisfied with the decrees of destiny, attempted to steal the box in which were kept the decrees of the Fates; but he found that it was fastened to the throne of Jupiter by a golden chain, and to remove it would pull down the pillars of heaven. So is the sacred ballot-box, which holds the decrees of freemen, linked by the indissoluble bond of necessity to the pillars of the Republic; and he who tampers with its decrees, or plucks it away from its place in our temple, will perish amid the ruins he has wrought.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration 'that all men are created equal', that the sanction of all just government is 'the consent of the governed'. Can these truths be realized until each man has a right be to heard on all matters relating to himself?”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Professor Demmon (16 December 1871), in The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield (1881) by E. E. Brown, p. 424
“The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1871 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement that he is reported to have first made at an Alumni Dinner in Delmonico's Restaurant in New York. (28 December 1871). Hopkins was a personal friend and the president of Williams College.
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To B. A. Hinsdale in 1874, as quoted in The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield: 1831-1877 (1925) by Theodore Clarke Smith, p. 517
“I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To H. Austin (4 February 1874) as quoted in Garfield (1978) by Allen Peskin, Ch. 17
“Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Representatives (June 1874), in The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield (1881) by E. E. Brown, p. 437
“The divorce between the church and the 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 church tax upon the whole community.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1774 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debate (22 June 1874) "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774 - 1875: Congressional Record, House of Representatives, 43rd Congress, 1st Session" pg 5384
“The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (22 June 1874) US Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 2nd session
“I am a poor hater.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (26 April 1876) as quoted in Garfield (1978) by Allen Peskin, Ch. 13
“The possession of great powers, no doubt, carries with it a contempt for mere external show.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Life and Character of Almeda A. Booth”, Memorial address at Hiram College, (22 June 1876), in President Garfield and Education : Hiram College Memorial (1881) by B. A. Hinsdale, p. 420
“Now more than ever before, 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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (4 July 1876)
“Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis. Conservatives have their place in the piping times of peace; but in emergencies only rugged issue men amount to much.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement of 1876, in The Diary of James A. Garfield: 1875-1877 (1983), edited by Harry James Brown and Frederick D. Williams. p. 396
“No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Regarding Ulysses S. Grant (4 March 1877), as quoted in Grant: A Biography (1981), by William S. McFeely, p. 449
“Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (4 February 1879)
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The House has today resolved to enter upon a revolution against the Constitution and Government of the United States... [N]othing less than the total subversion of this government.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic Party said to the Republicans, If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your government to death; but the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is there any death here in our camp? Yes, yes! Three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, the noblest band that ever trod the earth, died to make this camp a camp of glory and of liberty forever. But there are no dead issues here. There are no dead ideas here. Hang out our banner from under the blue sky this night, until it shall sweep the green turf under your feet. It hangs over our camp. Read away up under the stars the inscription we have written on it, lo these twenty-five years.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twenty-five years ago the Republican Party was married to liberty, and this is our silver wedding, fellow-citizens.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come down the glorious steps of our banner. Every great record we have made we have vindicated with our blood and with our truth. It sweeps the ground, and it touches the stars. Come here, young man, and put in your young life where all is living, and where nothing is dead but the heroes that defended it.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Commenting on a resolution offered by James Weaver of the Greenback Party that the government should issue all money, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives (5 April 1880), published in Financial Catechism an…
“All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to B. A. Hinsdale, (21 April 1880), in The Nation's Hero — In Memoriam : The Life of James Abram Garfield (1881) by J. M. Bundy, p. 216
Also quoted by: Thaddeus Stevens (misattributed)
“Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter accepting the Republican nomination to run for President (12 July 1880)
“There never can be a convention... that shall bind my vote against my will on any question whatever.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the 1880 Republican National Convention
“I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To a doctor treating his wound. Quoted in John Whitcomb, Claire Whitcomb "Real Life at the White House", Routledge, 2002, p. 177
“I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.”
James A. Garfield (1831–1881) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (14 March 1881)