James A. Garfield

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

A law is not a law without coercion behind it.
James A. Garfield

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
James A. Garfield

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.
James A. Garfield

Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.
James A. Garfield

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.
James A. Garfield

I am a poor hater.
James A. Garfield

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

I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.
James A. Garfield

I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.
James A. Garfield

I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.
James A. Garfield

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

Ideas control the world.
James A. Garfield

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

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

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

Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
James A. Garfield

Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.
James A. Garfield

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

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.
James A. Garfield

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.
James A. Garfield

Right reason is stronger than force.
James A. Garfield

Suicide is not a remedy.
James A. Garfield

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.
James A. Garfield

The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.
James A. Garfield

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

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

The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.
James A. Garfield

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

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

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.
James A. Garfield

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

Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.
James A. Garfield