“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
“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
“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
“Individuals entering into society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.”
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George Washington
“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.”
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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.”
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George Washington
“Pierce was the first President to “affirm” rather than “swear” his oath. He was also the first to have memorized his inaugural speech.”
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George Washington
“I regret exceedingly that the disputes between the protestants and Roman Catholics should be carried to the serious alarming height mentioned in your letters. 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.
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George Washington
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.”
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George Washington
“A man ought not to value himself of his achievements or rare qualities of wit, much less of his riches, virtue or kindred.”
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George Washington
“Men may speculate as they will; they may talk of patriotism; they may draw a few examples from ancient story' of great achievements performed by its influence; but whoever builds upon it as a sufficient Basis for conducting a long and [bloody] War can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by the prospect of Interest or some reward. For a time, it may of itself push Men to Action, to bear much, to encounter difficulties; but it will not endure unassisted by Interest.”
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George Washington
“Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those 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. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.”
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George Washington
“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
“It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.”
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George Washington
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”
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George Washington
