James A. Garfield Quotes

110 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

James A. Garfield
The prosperity which now prevails is without parallel in our history. Fruitful seasons have done much to secure it, but they have not done all. The preservation of the public credit and the resumption of specie payments, so successfully attained by the Administration of my predecessors, have enabled our people to secure the blessings which the seasons brought.

James A. Garfield
In the minds of most men, the kingdom of opinion is divided into three territories,--the territory of yes, the territory of no, and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt.

James A. Garfield
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.

James A. Garfield
I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error.

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

James A. Garfield
The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar data obtained by other nations.

James A. Garfield
Real political issues cannot be manufactured by the leaders of political parties, and real ones cannot be evaded by political parties. The real political issues of the day declare themselves, and come out of the depths of that deep which we call public opinion.

James A. Garfield
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.

James A. Garfield
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.

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
Monuments may be builded to express the affection or pride of friends, or to display their wealth, but they are only valuable for the characters which they perpetuate.

James A. Garfield
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.

James A. Garfield
In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the Church, counted its martyrs by thousands.

James A. Garfield
Whatever I may believe in theology, I do not believe in the doctrine of vicarious atonement in politics.

James A. Garfield
Talleyrand once said to the first Napoleon that the United States is a giant without bones. Since that time our gristle has been rapidly hardening.

James A. Garfield
There are times in the history of men and nations, when they stand so near the vale that separates mortals from the immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite.

James A. Garfield
We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct.

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

James A. Garfield