Rutherford B. Hayes Short Quotes

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The independence of all political and other bother is a happiness.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise.

Rutherford B. Hayes
The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.

Rutherford B. Hayes
No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.

Rutherford B. Hayes
One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

Rutherford B. Hayes
To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.

Rutherford B. Hayes
We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.

Rutherford B. Hayes
The progress of society is mainly … the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn't break and that the enemy's did.

Rutherford B. Hayes
The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.

Rutherford B. Hayes
It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Youth, however, is a defect that she is fast getting away from and may perhaps be entirely rid of before I shall want her.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.

Rutherford B. Hayes
In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.

Rutherford B. Hayes
It is now true that this is God's Country, if equal rights-a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life are everywhere secured to all.

Rutherford B. Hayes
The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression.

Rutherford B. Hayes
I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.

Rutherford B. Hayes
My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.

Rutherford B. Hayes
I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment — the sober second thought — of the people.

Rutherford B. Hayes
I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.

Rutherford B. Hayes
Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

Rutherford B. Hayes
I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden's election. Business prosperity does not, inmy judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think.

Rutherford B. Hayes