James A. Garfield

“All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.”

“The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.”

“He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.”

“Right reason is stronger than force.”

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

“There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.”

“A law is not a law without coercion behind it.”

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

“Poverty is uncomfortable; 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.”

“A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.”

“I am a poor hater.”

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”

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

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

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

“Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.”

“The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”

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

“I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.”

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