James A. Garfield Quotes

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

Now more than ever 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.

Now more than ever 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.

Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce...when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.

There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It really matters very little whether they are behind the wheel of a truck or running a business or bringing up a family. The teach the truth by living it.

A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.

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

Men are tending to materialism. Houses, lands, and worldly goods attract their attention, and as a mirage lure them on to death. Christianity, on the other hand leads only the natural body to death, and for the spirit, it points out a house not built with hands, eternal in the heavens... Let me urge you to follow Him, not as the Nazarene, the Man of Galilee, the carpenter's son, but as the ever living spiritual person, full of love and compassion, who will stand by you in life and death and eternity.

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

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

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.

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

I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions.

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

Right reason is stronger than force.

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.

The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

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.

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

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

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

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