James A. Garfield People Quotations

[I]t would be unjust to our people and dangerous to our institutions to apply any portion of revenues of the nation or of the States to the support of sectarian schools.

The prosperity which now prevails is without parallel in our history. Fruitful seasons have done much to secure it, but they have not done all. The preservation of the public credit and the resumption of specie payments, so successfully attained by the Administration of my predecessors, have enabled our people to secure the blessings which the seasons brought.

The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.

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

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

[The President is] the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.

Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.

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

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

Now more than ever 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.