James A. Garfield Quotes - Page 5

True art is but the anti-type of nature; the embodiment of discovered beauty in utility.

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.

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

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.

At present, the most valuable gift which can be bestowed upon women is something to do which they can do well and worthily, and thereby maintain themselves.

The separation of Church and State in everything relating to taxation should be absolute.

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.

Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics.

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

In my judgment it is the duty of Congress, while respecting to the uttermost the conscientious convictions and religious scruples of every citizen, to prohibit within its jurisdiction all criminal practices ... Nor can any ecclesiastical organization be safely permitted to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and powers of the National Government.

Swift defined observation to be an old man's memory.

When the shadow of the Presidential and Congressional election is lifted we shall, I hope to be in a better temper to legislate.

They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.

When the Divine Artist would produce a poem, He plants a germ of it in a human soul, and out of that soul the poem springs and grows as from the rose-tree the rose.

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.

To all our means of culture is added the powerful incentive to personal ambition, no post of honor is so high but the poorest may hope to reach it.

The divorce between church and state should be absolute.

The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.

I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.

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