The people are responsible for the character of their Congress.
Interpretation
Citizens play a crucial role in shaping the moral and ethical standards of their elected representatives.
James A. Garfield's quote emphasizes the idea that the quality and character of a nation's legislative body, in this case, Congress, directly reflect the values, choices, and actions of its citizens. It suggests that if the people desire integrity and virtue in their leaders, they must take responsibility for their own conduct in order to elect representatives who embody those qualities.
In practice
In a speech about civic duty at a local town hall meeting.
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.
I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
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.
Left-wing zealots have often been prepared to ride roughshod over due process and basic considerations of fairness when they think they can get away with it. For them the ends always seems to justify the means. That is precisely how their predecessors came to create the gulag.
Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
Some people are surprised that the Republicans are waging a war on women, or that they voted against equal pay for women. I'm not surprised at all. In some ways, it may be a good thing. They're defending the patriarchy, which is a wounded beast! And wounded beasts are always dangerous.
There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
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