“No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it.”
―
George Washington
“The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese and Spanish explorer”
―
George Washington
“[T]he gradual extension of our settlements will as certainly cause the savage, as the wolf, to retire; both being beasts of prey, though they differ in shape.”
―
George Washington
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government.”
―
George Washington
“Experience has taught us, that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures best calculated for their own good, without the intervention of a coercive power.”
―
George Washington
“To persevere in one's duty, and be silent is the best answer to calumny”
―
George Washington
“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism. Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist”
―
George Washington
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
―
George Washington
“System to all things is the soul of business. To execute properly and act maturely is the way to conduct it to your advantage.”
―
George Washington
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. John Adams, U.S. President”
―
George Washington
“To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.”
―
George Washington
“It is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”
―
George Washington
