Top 89 Quotes About Rutherford B Hayes
#1. How strange a scene is this in which we are such shifting figures, pictures, shadows. The mystery of our existence
I have no faith in any attempted explanation of it. It is all a dark, unfathomed profound.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#2. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#4. My judgment is that neither House of Congress, nor both combined, have any right to interfere in the count. It is for the Vice-President to do it all ... There should be no compromise of our Constitutional rights.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#5. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#6. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#7. The best religion the world has ever known is the religion of the Bible. It builds up all that is good.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#8. In the great and deep qualities of mind, heart, and soul, there is no change. Homer and Solomon speak to the same nature in man that is reached by Shakespeare and Lincoln. but in the accidents, the surroundings, the change is vast. All things now are mobile
movable.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#9. The reform [of the civil service] should be thorough, radical, and complete.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#10. I am succeeding very well so far with my legging, but it is a very mean business for a man that has been well brought up to engage in. It is the only way to get a bill from Cincinnati through, so it must be done.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#12. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#13. I have the greatest aversion to being a candidate on a ticket with a man whose record as an upright public man is to be in question
to be defended from the beginning to the end.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#14. Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn't break and that the enemy's did.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#15. So far as laws and institutions avail, men should have equality of opportunity for happiness; that is, of education, wealth, power. These make happiness secure. An equal diffusion of happiness so far as laws and institutions avail.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#16. One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#17. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#18. 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
Rutherford B. Hayes
#19. The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#21. Evening attend two "fandangos." Girls not very pretty but exceedingly graceful. [You] pay a dime for a figure and refreshments foryour doxy, who instead of eating prudently stores her cakes, etc., in a basket to be taken home for the family.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#23. Youth, however, is a defect that she is fast getting away from and may perhaps be entirely rid of before I shall want her.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#25. If a liberal policy towards the late Rebels is adopted, the ultra Republicans are opposed to it; if the colored people are honored, the extremists of the other wing cry out against it. I suspect I am right in both cases.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#26. Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#27. Busy replying to letters from divers office-seekers. They come by the dozens.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#28. The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#30. I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden's election. Business prosperity does not, inmy judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#31. It is now true that this is God's Country, if equal rights-a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life are everywhere secured to all.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#33. I prefer to make no new declarations [on southern policy beyond what was in the Letter of Acceptance]. But you may say, if you deem it advisable, that you know that I will stand by the friendly and encouraging words of that Letter, and by all that they imply. You cannot express that too strongly.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#35. My father and mother in 1817 were forty-nine days on the road with their emigrant wagons [from Vermont] to Ohio. More than two days for each hour that I spent in the same journey.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#36. My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad ... But let your words and conduct be perfectlypure
such as your mother might know without bringing a blush to your cheek ... If not already mentioned, do not tell your mother of the doubling in bed.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#37. We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#38. My wish for the American woman is that she may always be an elevating influence-man's inspiration. Let him go forth to duty while she weaves the spell which makes home a paradise to which he may return, ever welcome, whether he is victor or vanquished.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#40. It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#41. Both parties are injured by what is going on at Washington. Both are, therefore, more and more disposed to look for candidates outside of that atmosphere.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#42. The California fever is not likely to take us off ... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#43. Shall the railroads govern the country, or shall the people govern the railroads? Shall the interest of railroad kings be chieflyregarded, or shall the interest of the people be paramount?
Rutherford B. Hayes
#44. I am a radical in thought (and principle) and a conservative in method (and conduct).
Rutherford B. Hayes
#45. The most noticeable weakness of Congressmen is their timidity. They fear the use to be made of their "record." They are afraid ofmaking enemies. They do not vote according to their convictions from fear of consequences.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#46. I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#47. No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#49. Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#50. In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#51. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#52. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#53. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#54. Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#56. All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#59. For character, to prepare for the inevitable I recommend selections from [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. His writings have done for me far more than all other reading.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#61. He [William Merritt Chase] is, I suspect, getting a very truthful likeness. I would like it better if [it] was not so gray, so cramped about the eyes, and not quite so corpulent. But is this not quarreling with nature?
Rutherford B. Hayes
#62. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#63. My hobby more and more is likely to be common school education, or universal education.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#64. One thing you may be sure of, I was not a party to covering up anything.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#65. Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#66. Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#67. The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#68. To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#69. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#71. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#72. There are good points about all ... wars. People forget self. The virtues of magnanimity, courage, patriotism, etc., are called into life. People are more generous, more sympathetic, better, than when engaged in the more selfish pursuits of peace.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#73. The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#74. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#75. 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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#76. Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#77. It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#78. General [John] Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound
perfectly sound.I look for good results.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#79. I am less disposed to think of a West Point education as requisite for this business than I was at first. Good sense and energy are the qualities required.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#80. The filth and noise of the crowded streets soon destroy the elasticity of health which belongs to the country boy.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#81. The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#82. The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farmshould be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#83. The man who does that which avails in reforms or other good works always has clubs thrown at him. The nobodies are passed over in Silence, or with good natured unmeaning compliments after they leave high places.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#85. No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#86. You know I am given to antiquarian and genealogical pursuits. An old family letter is a delight to my eyes. I can prowl in old trunks of letters by the day with undiminished zest.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#87. I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#88. I too mean to be out of politics. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment gives me the boon of equality before the law, terminates my enlistment, and discharges me cured.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#89. Honesty, good intentions and industry, you will have of course. Without these your career would soon end with the loss of your good name. But you must be ambitious to be a good deal more. Webb Hayes, his son, went on to found what had become the Union Carbide Corporation.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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