Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
Interpretation
Justice and goodwill are more enduring than fleeting emotions like passion.
In this quote, Garfield suggests that while passion can be intense and vibrant, it is ultimately the principles of justice and goodwill that persist over time. This implies that actions driven by reason, fairness, and compassion will leave a lasting impact, outliving the temporary nature of emotional fervor.
In practice
In a speech about community values, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of justice over emotional responses.
Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics.
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Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.
If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
I never meet a ragged boy in the street without feeling that i may owe him a salute, for I know not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his coat.
The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.
Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.
We cannot afford to regard as normal the presence of injustice, inhumanity, and violence, including their verbal and cyber manifestations.
Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.
The struggle for justice doesn't end with me. This struggle is for all the Troy Davises who came before me and all the ones who will come after me.
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