Top 70 Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Every expert was once a beginner.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

2. “Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

3. “It is a government by the corporations, for the corporations.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

4. “He serves his party best who serves the country best.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

5. “Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

6. “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

7. “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

8. “It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

9. “You know I am given to antiquarian and genealogical pursuits. An old family letter is a delight to my eyes. I can prowl in old trunks of letters by the day with undiminished zest.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

10. “Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

11. “The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

12. “The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

13. “I too mean to be out of politics. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment gives me the boon of equality before the law, terminates my enlistment, and discharges me cured.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

14. “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

15. “It is a government of the people by the people for the people no longer it is a government of corporations by corporations for corporations.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

16. “Must swear off from swearing. Bad habit.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

17. “Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

18. “Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands, and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

19. “My policy is trust peace and to put aside the bayonet.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

20. “The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

21. “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

22. “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

23. “The best religion the world has ever known is the religion of the Bible. It builds up all that is good.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

24. “The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

25. “Honesty, good intentions and industry, you will have of course. Without these your career would soon end with the loss of your good name. But you must be ambitious to be a good deal more. Webb Hayes, his son, went on to found what had become the Union Carbide Corporation.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

26. “As friends go it is less important to live.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

27. “Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chieflyregarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

28. “If any of my men kill prisoners, I’ll kill them.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

29. “I am a freeman and jolly as a beggar.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

30. “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

31. “To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

32. “One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

33. “All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

34. “Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

35. “An amazing invention – but who would ever want to use one?”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

36. “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

37. “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

38. “Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

39. “My wish for the American woman is that she may always be an elevating influence-man’s inspiration. Let him go forth to duty while she weaves the spell which makes home a paradise to which he may return, ever welcome, whether he is victor or vanquished.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

40. “No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

41. “I am loaded down to the guards with educational, benevolent, and other miscellaneous public work, I must not attempt to do more. I cannot without neglecting imperative duties.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

42. “My hobby more and more is likely to be common school education, or universal education.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

43. “No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

44. “The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

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

— Rutherford B. Hayes

46. “Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

47. “Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

48. “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

49. “We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”

— Rutherford B. Hayes

50. “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