A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

Meaning of the quote

A law is only a real law if there is force or power behind it to make people follow it. Without this, a law has no meaning or effect.

About James A. Garfield

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Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.

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A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck.

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Ideas are the great warriors of the world, and a war that has no idea behind it, is simply a brutality.

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If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.

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If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it’s the best possible substitute for it.

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Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

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Ideas control the world.

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I have had many troubles in my life, but the worst of them never came.

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All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

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Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.

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I mean to make myself a man, and if I succeed in that, I shall succeed in everything else.

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The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.

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I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.

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Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.

James A. Garfield

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Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

James A. Garfield

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Suicide is not a remedy.

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The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

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Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.

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The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.

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A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.

James A. Garfield

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A law is not a law without coercion behind it.

James A. Garfield

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I love to deal with doctrines and events. The contests of men about men I greatly dislike.

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Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim.

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He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.

James A. Garfield

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Few men in our history have ever obtained the Presidency by planning to obtain it.

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The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

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I am a poor hater.

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The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think.

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Things don’t turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.

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If wrinkles must be written on our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

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