James A. Garfield Quotes

The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.

The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves.

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.

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.

There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing.

A nation is not worthy to be saved if, in the hour of its fate, it will not gather up all its jewels of manhood and life, and go down into the conflict however bloody and doubtful, resolved on measureless ruin or complete success.

..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.

Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.

Tortured for the Republic.

[Science] is the literature of God written on the stars-the trees-the rocks-and more important because [of] its marked utilitarian character.

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

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.

Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret where the seamstress plies her busy needle--there is industry.

If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

For love of country, they accepted death.

True art is but the anti-type of nature; the embodiment of discovered beauty in utility.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.

You and I are now nearly in middle age, and have not yet become soured and shrivelled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.

Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear, like owls and bats, before the light of day.

We hold reunions, not for the dead, for there is nothing in all the earth that you and I can do for the dead. They are past our help and past our praise. We can add to them no glory, we can give to them no immortality. They do not need us, but forever and forever more we need them.

Commerce links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests.

Right reason is stronger than force.

Now more than ever 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.

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms,--strength and force,--each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, and the thunder-bolt.

We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.

Suicide is not a remedy

I found a kind of party terrorism pervading and oppressing the minds of our best men.

When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope to be in a better temper to legislate.

The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a comtempt for mere external show

Heroes did not make our liberties; they but reflected and illustrated them.

Of course I deprecate war, but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.

They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.

Mankind have been slow to believe that order reigns in the universe-that the world is a cosmos and a chaos.

It is not right or manly to lie even about Satan.

I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'

God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!

In my judgment it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices ... Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the National Government.

A noble life crowned with heroic death, rises above and outlives the pride and pomp and glory of the mightiest empire of the earth.

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.

When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose.