Quotes from Rutherford B. Hayes

Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.

No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.

The independence of all political and other bother is a happiness.

Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself indeed, it seems to execute itself.

I am less disposed to think of a West Point education as requisite for this business than I was at first. Good sense and energy are the qualities required.

The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

The President...should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best.

It is now true that this is God's Country, if equal rights-a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life are everywhere secured to all.

The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.

My policy is trust peace and to put aside the bayonet.

In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

The truth is, this being errand boy to one hundred and fifty thousand people tires me so by night I am ready for bed instead of soirees.

The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

Youth, however, is a defect that she is fast getting away from and may perhaps be entirely rid of before I shall want her.

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.

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.

The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right.

No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.

Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

I am loaded down to the guards with educational, benevolent, and other miscellaneous public work, I must not attempt to do more. I cannot without neglecting imperative duties.