James A. Garfield Quotes

if I can't get what I want - well, I'll want what I can get.

Coming from a big family, I learned a lot. Things don't have to be perfect. You can do okay with 'almost.'

Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.

Nobody was really happy but everyone could accept.

I've learned over the years that there's a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don't love.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

I think you've got to play the hand that you're dealt and stop wishing for another hand.

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.

Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can.

When you cannot have steak, either you eat egg or you don't eat. So, in the end, you eat egg and you enjoy it.

When it's impossible, it's better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

As you cannot do what you want, Want what you can do

I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be anywhere. I'm not kidding.

I just want to be nominated; beggars can't be choosers.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

If you cannot have what you believe in, you must believe in what you have.

The right must ... yield to the expedient.

A result of accommodation and compromise cannot be supposed perfectly to coincide with any one’s idea of perfection.

We must do as we may when we may not do as we would.

If you can’t learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself then you better not be a legislator and you better not marry.

In any negotiation you have a wish list but then you proceed from where you can be.

He [Theodore Roosevelt] acted upon the maxim that half a loaf is better than no bread. I believe that half a loaf is fatal whenever it is accepted at the sacrifice of the basic principle sought to be attained.... A half-way measure never fairly tests the principle and many utterly discredit it.

I've never believed in seeking perfection at the risk of losing everything.

If you cannot have the thing you want, you want the thing you have.

I take whatever I can get with grace.