George Washington Quotes
-
Your proposal raises the greatest mischief that can befall my country. You could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for your self or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, never communicate, as from yourself, or anyone else, a sentiment of the like nature.
-
Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person’s own mind, than on the externals in the world.
-
Every post is honourable in which a man can serve his country.
-
Influence is not government.
-
There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
-
The determinations of Providence are always wise, often inscrutable; and, though its decrees appear to bear hard upon us at times, is nevertheless meant for gracious purposes.
-
Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
-
The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.
-
The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.
-
A lottery is the perfect tax...laid only upon the willing.
-
Require nothing unreasonable of your officers and men, but see that whatever is required be punctually complied with. Reward and punish every man according to his merit, without partiality or prejudice; hear his complaints; if well founded, redress them; if otherwise, discourage them, in order to prevent frivolous ones. Discourage vice in every shape, and impress upon the mind of every man, from the first to the lowest, the importance of the cause, and what it is they are contending for.
-
Patience is a noble virtue, and, when rightly exercised, does not fail of its reward.
-
System in all things should be aimed at; for in execution it renders every thing more easy.
-
Smaller societies must prepare the way for greater.
-
What was done with the seed saved from the India Hemp last summer? It ought, all of it, to have been sewn again; that not only a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes might have been raised, but to have disseminated the seed to others; as it is more valuable than the common Hemp.
-
Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!
-
I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.
-
I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.
-
It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
-
The duty of holding a Neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of Peace and amity toward other Nations.
-
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
-
Be Americans. Let there be no sectionalism, no North, South, East or West. You are all dependent on one another and should be one in union. In one word, be a nation. Be Americans, and be true to yourselves.
-
I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate.
-
As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it.