George Washington Quotes

379 Sourced Quotes

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.

George Washington
The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.

George Washington
The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.

George Washington
I was no party man myself, and the first wish of my heart was, if parties did exist, to reconcile them.

George Washington
Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal.

George Washington
Alas! Our dancing days are no more. We wish, however, all those who have a relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them.

George Washington
I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.... Tis well.

George Washington
The great mass of our citizens require only to understand matters rightly, to form right decisions.

George Washington
If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists.

George Washington
Next Monday the Convention in Virginia will assemble; we have still good hopes of its adoption here: though by no great plurality of votes. South Carolina has probably decided favourably before this time. The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come.

George Washington
I never say anything of a man that I have the smallest scruple of saying to him.

George Washington
Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person's own mind, than on the externals in the world.

George Washington
We should never despair; our situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new exertions and proportion our efforts to the exigency of the times.

George Washington
But if we are to be told by a foreign Power... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little.

George Washington
A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

George Washington
Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.

George Washington
We ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly, and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before they are capable of appreciating their own.

George Washington
This Government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support.

George Washington
Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude.

George Washington
To sell the overplus I cannot, because I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species. To hire them out, is almost as bad, because they could not be disposed of in families to any advantage, and to disperse the families I have an aversion. What then is to be done? Something must or I shall be ruined; for all the money (in addition to what I raise by Crops, and rents) that have been received for Lands, sold within the last four years, to the amount of Fifty thousand dollars, has scarcely been able to keep me a float.

George Washington
It is not the lowest priced goods that are always the cheapest - the quality is, or ought to be as much an object with the purchaser, as the price.

George Washington
I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.

George Washington
A part of the plan for creating discord, is, I perceive, to make me say things of others, and others of me, wch. have no foundation in truth. The first, in many instances I know to be the case; and the second I believe to be so; but truth or falsehood is immaterial to them, provided their objects are promoted.

George Washington
When once the woman has tempted us, and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there is no such thing as checking our appetites, whatever the consequences may be.

George Washington
Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.

George Washington