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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

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Rutherford B. Hayes
Age: 70 †
Born: 1822
Born: October 4
Died: 1893
Died: January 17
19Th U.S. President
Lawyer
Military Officer
Politician
Statesperson
Delaware
Ohio
Rutherford Birchard Hayes
Rutherford Hayes
R. B. Hayes
President Hayes
Humans
Lower
Nothing
Impulse
Good
Brings
Men
Seeking
Meanness
Like
Office
Impulses
Nature
Betrayed
Character
Traits
Human
Sorts

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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.
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An amazing invention - but who would ever want to use one?
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What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.
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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
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The best religion the world has ever known is the religion of the Bible. It builds up all that is good.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
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Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.
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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.
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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.
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The progress of society is mainly the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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