James A. Garfield Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Right reason is stronger than force.

The chief instrument of American statistics is the census, which should accomplish a two-fold object. It should serve the country by making a full and accurate exhibit of the elements of national life and strength, and it should serve the science of statistics by so exhibiting general results that they may be compared with similar data obtained by other nations.

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man, – it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil.

The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves.

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

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