45 quotes
Unjust attacks on public men do them more good than unmerited praise. They are hurt less by undeserved censure than by undeserved commendation. Abuse helps; often praise hurts.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this — their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government?
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
Partisanship should be kept out of the pulpit... The blindest of partisans are preachers. All politicians expect and find more candor, fairness, and truth in politicians than in partisan preachers.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
As to Mr. Lincoln’s name and fame and memory, — all is safe.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
General Crook gave me a very agreeable present this afternoon — a pair of his old brigadier-general straps.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
I am a freeman and jolly as a beggar.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
One of its [James A. Garfield’s assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the danger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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. Until these resources are exhausted I would not think of force.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)
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.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922)