James A. Garfield Quotes

Comrades of the 'Boys in Blue' and fellow-citizens of New York. I cannot look upon this great assemblage and these old veterans that have marched past us, and listen to the words of welcome from our comrade who has just spoken, without remembering how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it. [Applause.] This is New York; and yonder, toward the Battery, more than a hundred years ago, a young student of Columbia College was arguing the ideas of the American Revolution and American union against the un-American loyalty to monarchy, of his college president and professors. By and by, he went into the patriot army, was placed on the staff of Washington, [cheers] to fight the battles of his country, [cheers] and while in camp, before he was twenty-one years old, upon a drum-head he wrote a letter which contained every germ of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause.] That student, soldier, statesman, and great leader of thought, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, made this Republic glorious by his thinking, and left his lasting impress upon this the foremost State of the Union. [Applause.] And here on this island, the scene of his early triumphs, we gather tonight, soldiers of the new war, representing the same ideas of union, having added strength and glory to the monument reared by the heroes of the Revolution.

Scotland and Ireland were virtually disfranchised; Edinburgh and Glasgow, the two largest cities of Scotland, had each a constituency of only thirty-three members. A majority of the members of the House of Commons were elected by six thousand voters. This state of affairs afforded ready opportunities for the moneyed aristocracy to buy seats in Parliament, by the purchase of a few voters in rotten boroughs ; and also enabled the ministry to secure a servile majority in the Commons. The corruption resulting from these conditions, as exhibited in the latter half of the eighteenth century, can hardly be realized by the present generation. They afford, however, an illustration of the universal truth, that a government which does not draw its inspiration of liberty, justice, and morality from the people will soon become both tyrannical and corrupt.

Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?

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

We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, traces the victorious footsteps of our party in the past, and, carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle.

I am inclined to believe that the sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

Twenty-five years ago the Republican Party was married to liberty, and this is our silver wedding, fellow-citizens.

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

Enterprises of the highest importance to our moral and material well-being unite us and offer ample employment of our best powers. Let all our people, leaving behind them the battlefields of dead issues, move forward and in their strength of liberty and the restored Union win the grander victories of peace.

Come down the glorious steps of our banner. Every great record we have made we have vindicated with our blood and with our truth. It sweeps the ground, and it touches the stars. Come here, young man, and put in your young life where all is living, and where nothing is dead but the heroes that defended it.

A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

The late Baron Quetelet, of Belgium, a leading authority on this subject and on vital statistics, has shown that, if a pair of dice be thrown a million times, the lowest count being two and the highest twelve, the aggregate count will be almost exactly seven millions. The mathematical average will be realized in the practical result. In fact, the variation from that average will disappear long before the millionth throw. 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.

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

I thank you doctor, but I am a dead man.

I believe in God, and I trust myself in His hands.