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Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

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
Extremes
Vices
Defined
Virtue
Either
Mediocrity
Vice
Extreme

More quotes by 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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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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.
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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The religion of the Bible is the best in the world. I see the infinite value of religion. Let it be always encouraged. A world ofsuperstition and folly have grown up around its forms and ceremonies. But the truth in it is one of the deep sentiments in human nature.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
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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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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Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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.
Rutherford B. Hayes
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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
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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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One thing you may be sure of, I was not a party to covering up anything.
Rutherford B. Hayes