Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes
-
We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.
→ -
Busy replying to letters from divers office-seekers. They come by the dozens.
→ -
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.
→ -
Must swear off from swearing. Bad habit.
→ -
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?
→ -
There are two tendencies in all our war talk.... The first is to boast, if not of ourselves and our deeds, at least of our army, our corps, our regiments. The other is to find fault with, to criticize, to censure, to condemn others. If there is a victory, we gained it and must have the credit of it. If there is a failure, it was the fault of the other fellow,--he must be blamed for it.
→ -
[T]his free and easy old-bachelor sort of life is quite full of fun and jollity. Pease and myself room together; and everything like order and neatness is banished from our presence as a nuisance--old letters and old boots and shoes, duds clean and duds dirty, books and newspapers, tooth-brushes, shoe-brushes, and clothes-brushes, all heaped together on chairs, settees, etc., in dusty and "most admired confusion." Now, what is there imaginable in clean, tidy private life equal to this?
→ -
In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.
→ -
No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
I leave the governor's office next week, and with it public life[which] has been on the whole a pleasant one. But for ten years and over my salaries have not equalled my expenses, and there has been a feeling of responsibility, a lack of independence, and a necessary neglect of my family and personal interests and comfort, which make the prospect of a change comfortable to think of.
→ -
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.
→ -
My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad. But let your words and conduct be perfectly pure - 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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
No officer should be required or permitted to take part in the management of political organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns. Their right to vote and to express their views on public questions, either orally or through the press, is not denied, provided it does not interfere with the discharge of their official duties. No assessment for political purposes on officers or subordinates should be allowed.
→ -
I am a radical in thought (and principle) and a conservative in method (and conduct).
→ -
The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.
→ -
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 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.
→ -
My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.
→ -
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.
→ -
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
- Born: October 4, 1822
- Died: January 17, 1893
- Occupation: 19th U.S. President
Related Authors
-
William Howard Taft 27th U.S. President -
James K. Polk 11th U.S. President -
Grover Cleveland 24th U.S. President -
John Tyler 10th U.S. President -
Andrew Johnson 17th U.S. President -
James Buchanan 15th U.S. President -
William McKinley 25th U.S. President -
Chester A. Arthur 21st U.S. President -
Samuel J. Tilden Former Governor of New York -
Martin Van Buren 8th U.S. President -
William Henry Harrison 9th U.S. President -
Benjamin Harrison 23rd U.S. President -
James A. Garfield 20th U.S. President -
Millard Fillmore 13th U.S. President -
Warren G. Harding 29th U.S. President -
John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. President -
Ulysses S. Grant 18th U.S. President -
James Monroe 5th U.S. President -
Franklin Pierce 14th U.S. President -
Zachary Taylor 12th U.S. President