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Commitment
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The men who succeed best in public life are those who take the risk of standing by their own convictions.
-James Garfield
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Defeat
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Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.
-James Garfield
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Effort
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Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
-James Garfield
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Government
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Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature ... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.
-James Garfield, 1877
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Ideas
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Ideas control the world.
-James Garfield
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Luck
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A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.
-James Garfield
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Men
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I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.
-James Garfield
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Poverty
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Poverty is uncomfortable; but 9 times out of 10 the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and be compelled to sink or swim.
-James Garfield
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Prophecy
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History is the unrolled scroll of prophecy.
-James Garfield
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Spirituality
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If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.
-James Garfield
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Teaching
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I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log hut, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus and libraries without him.
-James Garfield, Address to Williams College alumni, NY, 1871
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Trouble, Troubles
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I have had many troubles, but the worst of them never came.
-James Garfield
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Work
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If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.
-James Garfield
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Books by and about James Garfield