Quotes from James A. Garfield

Eternity alone can reveal to the human race its debt of gratitude to the peerless and immortal name of Washington.

The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

He was one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power, and whose spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his triumphs were multiplied.

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.

Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.

I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

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.

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.

The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value.

The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.

The divorce between Church and 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 tax upon the whole community.

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it.

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.

If wrinkles must be written on our brow, let them not be written on our heart. The spirit should not grow old.

We should do nothing for revenge, but everything for security: nothing for the past; everything for the present and the future.

I so despise a man who blows his own horn, that I go to the other extreme.

There is no horizontal stratification of society in this country like the rocks in the earth, that hold one class down below forevermore, and let another come to the surface to stay there forever. Our stratification is like the ocean, where every individual drop is free to move, and where from the sternest depths of the mighty deep any drop may come up to glitter on the highest wave that rolls.

Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.

Jika kerut merut mesti tertera di dahi kita, biarlah mereka tidak tertera di hati kita. Jiwa kita jangan pernah menjadi tua.

It is a brave man... who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the best, and that is your leisure - the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below.