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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.

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
Five
Merit
Friends
Aids
Ability
Claims
Real
Lack
Patronage
Made
Cold
Perilous
Every
Hurt
Appointment
Men
Public
Appointments
Support
Hostile

More quotes by Rutherford B. Hayes

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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
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My policy is trust peace and to put aside the bayonet.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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
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The reform [of the civil service] should be thorough, radical, and complete.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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I am loaded down to the guards with educational, benevolent, and other miscellaneous public work, I must not attempt to do more. I cannot without neglecting imperative duties.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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
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We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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
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Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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