“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
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George Washington
“Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a person’s own mind, than on the externals in the world.”
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George Washington
“Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.”
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George Washington
“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.”
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George Washington
“Wherein you reprove another be unblameable yourself, for example is more prevalent than precepts.”
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George Washington
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. John Adams, U.S. President”
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George Washington
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. John Adams, U.S. President”
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George Washington
“On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat”
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George Washington
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”
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George Washington
“In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people. James Madison, U.S. President”
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George Washington
“Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed its rank among the 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, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment... have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. 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.
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George Washington
“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”
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George Washington
“...overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.”
―
George Washington
