Famous Quotes

Quotes by George Washington

• Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.
• Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
• Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
• Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.
• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.
• Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
• Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater.
• Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
• Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
• Government is not reason it is not eloquent it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
• Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
• Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
• 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 strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
• I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.
• I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
• 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.
• If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
• If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
• It is better to be alone than in bad company.
• It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.
• It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.
• It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
• It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
• Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair the rest is in the hands of God.
• Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
• Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.
• Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.
• My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.
• My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
• Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.
• Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.
• Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.
• Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
• Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.