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Rutherford B. Hayes

66 quotes

“The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter "to a leading editor" (10 April 1875), as quoted in The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes (1876) edited by James Quay Howard, ch. X, p. 144
“We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech, Marion, Ohio (31 July 1875)
“Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest — the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally — and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Inaugural Address (5 March 1877)
“The President of the United States of necessity owes his election to office to the suffrage and zealous labors of a political party, the members of which cherish with ardor and regard as of essential importance the principles of their party organization; but he should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Inaugural Address (5 March 1877)
“If he had it would have deprived me of two reasons for feeling satisfied with this afternoon - one was that I escaped by leaving the other end of the city, and the other, what I gained by enjoying with you this pleasant occasion.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 13th Anniversary of the National Deaf Mute College, Washington, D.C. (7 April 1877)
“It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fourth State of the Union Address (6 December 1880)
“It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fourth State of the Union Address (6 December 1880)
“The only road, the sure road to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfilment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private, according to its letter and spirit.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at New England Society Dinner, Brooklyn (21 December 1880)
“In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) said by 1893 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Rutherford B. Hayes, and His America (1954) by Harry Barnard. p. 481
“Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) said by 1893 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1991) by William A. DeGregorio, p. 290
“For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1841 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (7 November 1841)
“Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (21 December 1843), referring to Aristotle's Ethics
“Youth, however, is a defect that she is fast getting away from and may perhaps be entirely rid of before I shall want her.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About Lucy Webb, nine years his junior, whom he later married, in a letter to his sister, Fanny Hayes Platt (23 October 1847)
“We have now become pretty well acquainted with the sugar-growing part of Texas. The life of a planter who has a fair start in the world is one of the most independent imaginable. We here find the pleasures of fashionable life without its tyranny. I doubt, however, whether a person of Northern education could so far forget his home-bred notions and feelings as ever to be thoroughly Southern on the subject of slavery. We have seen none of “the horrors” so often described, but on the other hand I have seen nothing to change my Northern opinions.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1849 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes (27 January 1849)
“Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (4 January 1861)
“I never enjoyed any business or mode of life as much as I do this. I really feel badly when I think of several of my intimate friends who are compelled to stay at home. These marches and campaigns in the hills of western Virginia will always be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 August 1861)
“I still feel just as I told you, that I shall come safely out of this war. I felt so the other day when danger was near. I certainly enjoyed the excitement of fighting our way out of Giles to the Narrows as much as any excitement I ever experienced. I had a good deal of anxiety the first hour or two on account of my command, but not a particle on my own account. After that, and after I saw that we were getting on well, it was really jolly. We all joked and laughed and cheered constantly.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (26 May 1862)
“These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. — Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (5 June 1862)
“We have dancing … from soon after sundown until a few minutes after nine o’clock.... Occasionally the boys who play the female partners in the dances exercise their ingenuity in dressing to look as girlish as possible. In the absence of lady duds they use leaves, and the leaf-clad beauties often look very pretty and always odd enough.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sophia Birchard Hayes (10 July 1862)
“You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va.]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes, whose cousin was a prisoner and died at Andersonville prison (2 July 1864)
“We now talk of our killed and wounded. There is however a very happy feeling. Those who escape regret of course the loss of comrades and friends, but their own escape and safety to some extent modifies their feelings.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 October 1864)
“When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents — about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (23 November 1864)
“General Crook gave me a very agreeable present this afternoon — a pair of his old brigadier-general straps. The stars are somewhat dimmed by hard service, but will correspond pretty well with my rusty old blouse. Of course I am very much gratified by the promotion. I know perfectly well that the rank has been conferred on all sorts of small people and so cheapened shamefully, but I can’t help feeling that getting it at the close of a most bloody campaign on the recommendation of fighting generals like Crook and Sheridan is a different thing.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (9 December 1864)
“We had an inspection today of the brigade. The Twenty-third was pronounced the crack regiment in appearance, … [but] I could see only six to ten in a company of the old men. They all smiled as I rode by. But as I passed away I couldn’t help dropping a few natural tears. I felt as I did when I saw them mustered in at Camp Chase.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (17 December 1864)
“Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn’t break and that the enemy’s did.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About the success of the crucial charge he led at Opequon, in a letter to Sardis Birchard (20 December 1864)
“While your rheumatism stays with you I naturally feel anxious to hear often. If you should be so unlucky as to become a cripple, it will certainly be bad, but you may be sure I shall be still a loving husband, and we shall make the best of it together.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (12 March 1865])
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (17 June 1866)
“I am a freeman and jolly as a beggar.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On retiring as governor of Ohio, in a letter to William Johnston (7 January 1872)
“I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (20 November 1872)
“I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1874 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Austin Birchard (21 April 1874), when he was approximately $46,000 in debt.
“My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad.... But let your words and conduct be perfectly pure — such as your mother might know without bringing a blush to your cheek.... If not already mentioned, do not tell your mother of the doubling in bed.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his son, Rutherford P. Hayes (26 February 1875)
“I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his son, Webb Hayes (26 February 1875)
“Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (11 May 1875)
“My speaking is irregular. Sometimes quite good, sometimes not, but generally will do... I am too far along in experience and years both for this business. I do not go into [it] with the zest of old times. Races, baseball, and politics are for the youngsters.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (14 August 1875)
“My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (14 March 1877)
“I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment — the sober second thought — of the people.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (1 March 1878)
“General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1878 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (15 May 1878)
“There can be no complete and permanent reform of the civil service until public opinion emancipates congressmen from all control and influence over government patronage. Legislation is required to establish the reform. No proper legislation is to be expected as long as members of Congress are engaged in procuring offices for their constituents.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (14 February 1879)
“We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (6 June 1879)
“I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform — or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (6 June 1879)
“Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (13 July 1879)
“Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Guy M. Bryan (1 January 1881)
“Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (23 January 1881)
“The debt was the most sacred obligation incurred during the war. It was by no means the largest in amount. We do not haggle with those who lent us money. We should not with those who gave health and blood and life. If doors are opened to fraud, contrive to close them. But don’t deny the obligation, or scold at its performance.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About the Arrears of Pensions Act (1879) for disabled Union veterans, which Hayes cheerfully signed, which was roundly criticized as too expensive and too open to fraud by unscrupulous veterans fabricating service-relat…
“Constitutional statutes … which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern — can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (17 February 1882)
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (17 February 1882)
“Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. Until these resources are exhausted I would not think of force.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On attempts at an alcohol prohibition amendment, in his Diary (9 October 1883)
“Every good cause gained a victory when the Union troops were triumphant. Our final victory was the triumph of religion, of virtue, of knowledge.... During those four years, whatever our motives, whatever our lives, we were fighting on God’s side. We were doing His work. What would this country have been if we had failed?”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (27 October 1883)
“The [Loyal] legion has taken the place of the club — the famous Cincinnati Literary Club — in my affections.... The military circles are interested in the same things with myself, and so we endure, if not enjoy, each other.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Fanny Hayes (1 November 1885)
“Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary (6 April 1886)