George Washington (1732-1799)

Quotes

• Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

• Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

• It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

• Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

• As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

• Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

• Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

• 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.

• I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

• If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

• It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.

• Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

• My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

• My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty. Iit is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

• Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

• The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

• War - an act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.

• There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.

• The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine.

• It is our true policy to steer clear of any permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.