James Garfield Quotes

Ideas control the world.

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

government

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

war

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

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

education

An Englishman who was wrecked on a strange shore and wandering along the coast came to a gallows with a victim hanging on it, and fell down on his knees and thanked God that he at last beheld a sign of civilization.

civilization optimistic

We may divide the struggles of the human race into two chapters: first, the fight to get leisure; and second, what to do with our leisure when we have won it. Like all blessings, leisure is a bad thing unless it is well used.

leisure