“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
“[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.”
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George Washington
“One of the expedients of party to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts.”
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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
“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
“Do not suffer your good nature [...] to say yes when you ought to say no; remember that it is a public not a private cause that is to be injured or benefitted by your choice”
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George Washington
“There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy”
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George Washington
“I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”
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George Washington
“Be not glad at the misfortune of another, though he may be your enemy.”
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George Washington
“In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.”
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George Washington
“The reflection upon my situation and that of this army produces many an uneasy hour when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in.”
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George Washington
“If the cause is advanced, indifferent is it to me where or in what quarter it happens.”
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George Washington
“the great mass of our Citizens require only to understand matters rightly, to form right decisions.”
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George Washington
“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.”
―
George Washington
