146 Quotes by Rutherford B. Hayes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.