George Washington Quotes
-
Being a politician makes your hair turn white.
-
Among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention that of providing for the common defense will merit particular regard. To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
-
There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
-
The liberality of sentiment toward each other, which marks every political and religious denomination of men in this country, stands unparalleled in the history of nations.
-
The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.
-
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
-
The power under the Constitution will always be in the people.
-
By an ambitious chieftain, aiming only to aggrandize himself and establish his power, the subject might have been regarded in a different light; but the designs and actions of Washington centred in nobler objects, the freedom, tranquillity, and happiness of his country, in which he was to participate equally with every other citizen, neither seeking nor expecting any other preeminence than that of having been an instrument in the hand of Providence.
-
I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one's life, the foundation of happiness or misery.
-
Where are our Men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their Country?
-
It is among the evils, and perhaps not the smallest, of democratical governments, that the people must feel before they will see. When this happens they are roused to action. Hence it is that those kinds of government are so slow.
-
At my age, and in my circumstances, what sinister object, or personal emolument had I to seek after, in this life? The growing infirmities of age and the increasing love of retirement, daily confirm my decided predilection for domestic life: and the great Searcher of human hearts is my witness, that I have no wish, which aspires beyond the humble and happy lot of living and dying a private citizen on my own farm.
-
I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation had a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves.
-
I am now . . . on a subject, which fills me with inexpressible concern . . . . But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose.
-
We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.
-
In his address of 19 September 1796, given as he prepared to leave office, President George Washington spoke about the importance of morality to the country's well-being: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?
-
At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation; and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.
-
The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.
-
I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this; because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults, or remove prejudices which are imbibed against him.
-
The most enviable praise of all is just to be called an honest man.
-
Reason, too late perhaps, may convince you of the folly of misspending time.
-
Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
-
Leave nothing to the uncertainty of procuring a warlike apparatus at the moment of public danger.
-
I will move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my fathers.