James A. Garfield Quotes

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Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.

James A. Garfield
It is related in ancient fable that one of the gods, dissatisfied with the decrees of destiny, attempted to steal the box in which were kept the decrees of the Fates; but he found that it was fastened to the throne of Jupiter by a golden chain, and to remove it would pull down the pillars of heaven. So is the sacred ballot-box, which holds the decrees of freemen, linked by the indissoluble bond of necessity to the pillars of the Republic; and he who tampers with its decrees, or plucks it away from its place in our temple, will perish amid the ruins he has wrought.

James A. Garfield
Now more than ever before, 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. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature... If the NEXT CENTENNIAL does not find us a great nation... it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.

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

James A. Garfield
I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.

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

James A. Garfield
The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others.

James A. Garfield
Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this government; you have it in your power, by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Government.

James A. Garfield
Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.

James A. Garfield
Statistics has been the handmaid of science, and has poured a flood of light upon the dark questions of famine and pestilence, ignorance and crime, disease and death.

James A. Garfield
Garfield: "Old boy! Do you think my name will have a place in human history?"
Rockwell: "Yes, a grand one, but a grander one in human hearts. Old fellow, you mustn't talk in that way. You have a great work yet to perform."
Garfield: "No. My work is done."

James A. Garfield
Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation, saying to the foe that lay prostrate at its feet: "This is our only revenge — that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars for ever and ever, the immortal principles of truth and justice: that all men, white or black, shall be free, and shall stand equal before the law."

James A. Garfield
I am glad to have the opportunity of standing up against a rabble of men who hasten to make weathercocks of themselves.

James A. Garfield
It has been said that unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. It should be said with the utmost emphasis that this question of the suffrage will never give repose or safety to the States or to the nation until each, within its own jurisdiction, makes and keeps the ballot free and pure by the strong sanctions of the law.

James A. Garfield
I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of the Revolution gave birth.

James A. Garfield
We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, traces the victorious footsteps of our party in the past, and, carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle.

James A. Garfield
If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.

James A. Garfield
It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work, sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that "a little child shall lead them," for our own little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic.

James A. Garfield
Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have finally renounced your purpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain the government. In that belief you have been permitted to return to power in the two Houses.

James A. Garfield
Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

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

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

James A. Garfield
The possession of great powers, no doubt, carries with it a contempt for mere external show.

James A. Garfield
The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.

James A. Garfield
The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are intrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong, I shall at the proper time ask Congress to fix the tenure of the minor offices of the several Executive Departments and prescribe the grounds upon which removals shall be made during the terms for which incumbents have been appointed.

James A. Garfield
Fellow citizens, we may now say that the past, with all its wealth of glorious associations, is secure. The air is filled with brightness; the horizon is aglow with hope. The future is full of magnificent possibilities. But God has committed to us a trust which we must not, we dare not overlook. By the dispensation of his Providence, the chains have been stricken from four millions of the inhabitants of this Republic, and he has shown us the truth of that early utterance of Abraham Lincoln's, 'This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave must have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.'.

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