Top 90 James A. Garfield Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?”

— James A. Garfield

52. “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

53. “History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

55. “In the long, fierce struggle for freedom of opinion, the press, like the Church, counted its martyrs by thousands.”

— James A. Garfield

56. “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

57. “I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

59. “The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

61. “It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

63. “I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.”

— James A. Garfield

64. “Liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality.”

— James A. Garfield

65. “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

66. “Swift defined observation to be an old man’s memory.”

— James A. Garfield

67. “Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.”

— James A. Garfield

68. “For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.”

— James A. Garfield

69. “Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

71. “We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government.”

— James A. Garfield

72. “I am receiving what I suppose to be the usual number of threatening letters on the subject. Assassination can be no more guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either.”

— James A. Garfield

73. “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.”

— James A. Garfield

74. “You and I are now nearly in middle age, and have not yet become soured and shrivelled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

76. “Power exhibits itself under two distinct forms, – strength and force, – each possessing peculiar qualities, and each perfect in its own sphere. Strength is typified by the oak, the rock, the mountain. Force embodies itself in the cataract, the tempest, and the thunder-bolt.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

78. “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

79. “It is not right or manly to lie even about Satan.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

81. “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.”

— James A. Garfield

82. “The divorce between church and state should be absolute.”

— James A. Garfield

83. “I found a kind of party terrorism pervading and oppressing the minds of our best men.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

85. “Heroes did not make our liberties; they but reflected and illustrated them.”

— James A. Garfield

86. “It is not part of the functions of the national government to find employment for people and if we were to appropriate a hundred millions for this purpose, we should be taxing forty millions of people to keep a few thousand employed.”

— James A. Garfield

87. “There are some things I am afraid of: I am afraid to do a mean thing.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

89. “The possession of great powers no doubt carries with it a comtempt for mere external show.”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield

91. “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

92. “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.”

— James A. Garfield

93. “Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe, – human or divine. A law is not law without coercion behind it.”

— James A. Garfield

94. “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

95. “The right of private judgment is absolute in every American citizen.”

— James A. Garfield

96. “I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that ‘the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.’”

— James A. Garfield

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

— James A. Garfield