James A. Garfield

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.”

“The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.”

“A law is not a law without coercion behind it.”

“All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.”

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.”

“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.”

“I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.”

“He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.”

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

“Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.”

“I am a poor hater.”

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

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

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