James A. Garfield

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

“Next in importance to the divine profusion of water, light, and air... may be reckoned the universal diffusion of letters.”

“The world's history is a divine poem of which the history of every nation is a canto and every man a word.”

“For the noblest man that lives, there is a limit to patience.”

“There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are.”

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

“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.”

“The developments of statistics are causing history to be rewritten.”

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

“I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.”

“If the power to do hard work is not a talent, it is the best possible substitute for it.”

“If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should not grow old.”

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

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