George Washington Quotes
-
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.
-
Painful as the task is to describe the dark side of our affairs, it sometimes becomes a matter of indispensable necessity.
-
Undertake not to teach your equal in the art himself professes; it savors arrogancy.
-
The truth of the matter is one knows what it's like being the president. Not I, nor any president to come hence. This is because life, thankfully, offers deeper quandaries. While in office, I would often wake up in a daze, wondering how I could wiggle my toes without even thinking it so, or why hair grows only on certain places and not our entire bodies, or why we aren't completely bald, or why we must close our eyes and sleep every night, or any of the millions of particulars of daily existence, let alone that I was elected the leader of an entire nation.
-
Democratical States must always feel before they can see: it is this that makes their Governments slow, but the people will be right at last.
-
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 hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men.
-
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.
-
While all men within our territories are protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of their consciences; it is rationally to be expected from them in return, that they will [demonstrate] the innocence of their lives and the beneficence of their actions; for no man, who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly be a true Christian, or a credit to his own religious society.
-
I will move gently down the stream of life until I sleep with my fathers.
-
Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.
-
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.
-
Nowhere does one become more convinced of the strong hold which Freemasonry takes upon the minds and lives of those aging workers in the Craft who have attained its highest honors and of their firm belief in the power of its teachings to purify the soul of men and raise them to a new dignity and to greater heights of spirituality and practical morality.
-
There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.
-
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.
-
I die hard but am not afraid to go.
-
The power under the Constitution will always be in the people.
-
Good company will always be found much less expensive than bad.
-
Reason, too late perhaps, may convince you of the folly of misspending time.
-
At a distance from the theatre of action, truth is not always related without embellishment, and sometimes is entirely perverted, from a misconception of the causes which produce the effects that are the subjects of censure.
-
Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.
-
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.
-
The harder the conflict, the greater the triumph.
-
The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.