James A. Garfield Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

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
I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.

James A. Garfield
I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.

James A. Garfield
There towers to the sky a monument of four million pairs of human fetters taken from the arms of slaves, and I read on its little headstone this, 'Sacred to the memory of Human Slavery'. For forty years of its infamous life the Democratic Party taught that it was divine; God's institution. They defended it, they stood around it, they followed it to its grave as a mourner. But here it lies, dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln; dead by the power of the Republican Party, dead by the justice of Almighty God. Don't camp there, young man. That is no place in which to put your young life. Come out, and come over into this camp of liberty, of order, of law, of justice, of freedom, of all that is glorious under these night stars.

James A. Garfield
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
The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, they have "followed the light as God gave them to see the light." They are rapidly laying the material foundations of self-support, widening their circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws.

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

James A. Garfield
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
Fellow-Citizens: We stand today upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life — a century crowded with perils, but crowned with the triumphs of liberty and law. Before continuing the onward march let us pause on this height for a moment to strengthen our faith and renew our hope by a glance at the pathway along which our people have traveled.

James A. Garfield
Enterprises of the highest importance to our moral and material well-being unite us and offer ample employment of our best powers. Let all our people, leaving behind them the battlefields of dead issues, move forward and in their strength of liberty and the restored Union win the grander victories of peace.

James A. Garfield
I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.

James A. Garfield
Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?

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

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

James A. Garfield
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
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
The great Carlyle has said that the best gift God ever gave to man was an eye that could really see; I venture to add that an equally rare and not less important gift is the courage to tell what one sees.

James A. Garfield
Twenty-five years ago the Republican Party was married to liberty, and this is our silver wedding, fellow-citizens.

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

James A. Garfield
I have always said that my whole public life was an experiment to determine whether an intelligent people would sustain a man in acting sensibly on each proposition that arose, and in doing nothing for mere show or demagogical effect.

James A. Garfield
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
If there be one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man — it is a man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.

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

James A. Garfield
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
On Lincoln's assassination:
My fellow citizens, the President is dead, but the government lives and God omnipotent reigns.

James A. Garfield
His last words to his chief of staff, David G. Swaim:
Oh Swaim, there is a pain here. Swaim, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!

James A. Garfield
Mister Speaker, we did more than merely to break off the chains of the slaves. The abolition of slavery added four million citizens to the Republic. By the decision of the Supreme Court, by the decision of the Attorney-General, by the decision of all the departments of our Government, those men made free are, by the act of freedom, made citizens. As another has said, they must be "four million disfranchised, disarmed, untaught, landless, thriftless, non-producing, non-consuming, degraded men, or four million land-holding, industrious, arms-bearing, and voting population. Choose between the two!"

James A. Garfield
The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.

James A. Garfield