James A. Garfield

Mister Speaker, I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose …

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

No American has carried greater fame out of the White House than this silent man who leaves it today.

Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis. Conservatives have their place in the piping times of peace; but in emergencies only rugged issue men amount to much.

The possession of great powers, no doubt, carries with it a contempt for mere external show.

Nothing is more uncertain than the result of any one throw; few things more certain than the result of many throws. When applied to human life, the law of averages exhibits many striking results.

The return to solid values is always hard... Distress, panic, and hard times have marked our pathway in returning to solid values.

The divorce between the church and the 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 …

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

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

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.

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

The lesson of History is rarely learned by the actors themselves.

But liberty is no negation. It is a substantive, tangible reality. It is the realization of those imperishable truths of the Declaration 'that all men are created equal', that the sanction of all just government is 'the consent of the …

I affirm, therefore, that our present position is one of apostasy; and to give the ballot to the negro will be no innovation, but a return to the old paths, a restoration of that spirit of liberty to which the sufferings and sacrifices of …

No federal legislation prior to 1812 placed any restriction on the right of suffrage in consequence of the color of the citizen. From 1789 to 1812 Congress passed ten separate laws establishing new Territories. In all these, freedom, and …

However, to grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers.

He was intelligent enough to understand from the beginning of the war that the destiny of his race was involved in it. He was intelligent enough to be true to that Union which his educated and traitorous master was endeavoring to destroy. …

let suffrage be extended to all men of proper age, regardless of color.

Let us not commit ourselves to the absurd and senseless dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage, the talisman of liberty.

In the extremity of our distress, we called upon the black man to help us save the Republic; and, amid the very thunders of battle, we made a covenant with him, sealed both with his blood and with ours, and witnessed by Jehovah, that, when …

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

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

If any theories or opinions of mine can be damaged by facts, so much the worse for my theories.