Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes

It is a government of the people by the people for the people no longer it is a government of corporations by corporations for corporations

Every expert was once a beginner.

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.

To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.

Must swear off from swearing. Bad habit.

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.

The President of the United States should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves his country best.

Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands, and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.

Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest - the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.

Crimes increase as education, opportunity, and property decrease. Whatever spreads ignorance, poverty and, discontent causes crime.... Criminals have their own responsibility, their own share of guilt, but they are merely the hand.... Whoever interferes with equal rights and equal opportunities is in some real degree, responsible for the crimes committed in the community.

An amazing invention - but who would ever want to use one?

The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.

Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.

I would honor the man who give to his country a good newspaper.

No man, however benevolent, liberal, and wise, can use a large fortune so that it will do half as much good in the world as it would if it were divided into moderate sums and in the hands of workmen who had earned it by industry and frugality. The piling up of estates often does great and conspicuous good.... But no man does with accumulated wealth so much good as the same amount would do in many hands.

The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.

It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

The President of the United States of necessity owes his election to office to the suffrage and zealous labors of a political party, the members of which cherish with ardor and regard as of essential importance the principles of their party organization; but he should strive to be always mindful of the fact that he serves his party best who serves the country best.

Conscience is the authentic voice of God to you.

Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn't break and that the enemy's did.

My policy is trust peace and to put aside the bayonet.

Personally I do not resort to force - not even the force of law - to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example - of fashion.

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.

Have been reading "Genesis" several Sundays, not as a Christian reads for "spiritual consolation," "instruction," etc., not as aninfidel reads to carp and quarrel and criticize, but as one who wishes to be informed and furnished in the earliest and most wonderful of all literary productions. The literature of the Bible should be studied as one studies Shakespeare, for illustration and language, for its true pictures of man and woman nature, for its early historical record.

Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.

Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education. To this end, liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools by the State governments, and, if need be, supplemented by legitimate aid from national authority.

In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.

The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not - will not be forgotten nor neglected. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.

Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation. Twenty millions in the temperate zone, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, full of vigor, industry, inventive genius, educated, and moral; increasing by immigration rapidly, and, above all, free--all free--will form a confederacy of twenty States scarcely inferior in real power to the unfortunate Union of thirty-three States which we had on the first of November.

These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery - in fact, its only enemy.

I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.

Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier's occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.

No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.

No capitalists after any war were ever so well paid for money loaned to the nation that carried it on. No class of money-makers ever gained such prosperity by any other war, as our War for the Union brought to the money-getters of America. All this was due in great measure to the rank and file of the Union army. Now let no rich man haggle with a needy veteran of that war about his right to a pension!

I am a radical in thought (and principle) and a conservative in method (and conduct).

The truth is, this being errand boy to one hundred and fifty thousand people tires me so by night I am ready for bed instead of soirees.

The filth and noise of the crowded streets soon destroy the elasticity of health which belongs to the country boy.

It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.

General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.

We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power

Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can't soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.

I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment - the sober second thought - of the people.

Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.

The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

The independence of all political and other bother is a happiness.