“For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge.”
Speech in New York City (15 April 1865) on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, as reported in John Clark Ridpath, The Life and Work of James A. Garfield (1882 memorial edition), p. 194. Several biographers include this speech, but accounts of his remarks that day vary
1860s
Context: For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for security of the future I would do every thing.
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James A. Garfield 129
American politician, 20th President of the United States (i… 1831–1881Related quotes
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: There must be not merely preparedness in things material; there must be preparedness in soul and mind. To prepare a great army and navy without preparing a proper national spirit would avail nothing. And if there is not only a proper national spirit, but proper national intelligence, we shall realize that even from the standpoint of the army and navy some civil preparedness is indispensable. For example, a plan for national defense which does not include the most far-reaching use and cooperation of our railroads must prove largely futile. These railroads are organized in time of peace. But we must have the most carefully thought out organization from the national and centralized standpoint in order to use them in time of war. This means first that those in charge of them from the highest to the lowest must understand their duty in time of war, must be permeated with the spirit of genuine patriotism; and second, that they and we shall understand that efficiency is as essential as patriotism; one is useless without the other.
Mein Kampf, Volume 2, Chapter IV, “Personality and the Ideal of the People’s State,” Trans. Marco Roberto, MVR, 2015, p. 33, first published 1926
1920s
Source: The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (1992), Ch. 9: 'The Mystery at the End of the Universe', p. 232
“Something that is merely negative creates nothing.”
(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.
“A mere nothing suffices — and the lightning strikes.”
Source: Steppenwolf (1927), p. 56
Context: A thousand such possibilities await him. His fate brings them on, leaving him no choice; for those outside of the bourgeoisie live in the atmosphere of these magic possibilities. A mere nothing suffices — and the lightning strikes.
I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
volume I; lecture 3, "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences"; section 3-4, "Astronomy"; p. 3-6
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
Federalist No. 4 (7 November 1787) Full text from Wikisource http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Federalist/4.
1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 4 (1787)