George Washington Quotes
February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799
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There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
George Washington
Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.
George Washington— George Washington, general orders, (6 July 1777), published in The Writings of George Washington (1933), edited by John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 8, p. 359
If they have real grievances redress them, if possible; or acknowledge the justice of them, and your inability to do it at the moment. If they have not, employ the force of government against them at once.
George Washington— Letter to Henry Lee (31 October 1786).
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
George Washington— Letter to his niece, Harriet Washington (30 October 1791).
Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.
George Washington— Letter to Benedict Arnold (14 September 1775).
There is nothing that gives a man consequence, and renders him fit for command, like a support that renders him independent of everybody but the State he serves.
George Washington— Letter to the president of Congress, Heights of Harlem (24 September 1776).
Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
George Washington— Letter to Major-General Robert Howe (17 August 1779), published in "The Writings of George Washington": 1778-1779, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (1890)Paraphrased variants:Few men have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder.
Parade with me my brave fellows, we will have them soon!
George Washington— Rallying his troops at the Battle of Princeton (3 January 1777).
True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
George Washington— Letter to Bushrod Washington (15 January 1783).
Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.
George Washington— Statement as he put on his glasses before delivering his response to the first Newburgh Address (15 March 1783).
Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
George Washington— Letter, dated August 19th, 1789, To the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal church in the States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, in general Convention assembled. Scan at memory.loc.gov.
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.
George Washington— Letter to Sir Edward Newenham (22 June 1792) as published in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources (1939) as edited by John Clement Fitzpatrick
Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!
George Washington— George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), The Writings of George Washington, Volume 33, page 270 (Library of Congress).
Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
George Washington— George Washington, Moral Maxims, Virtue and Vice, The Trial of Virtue.
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.
George Washington— George Washington, fifth annual address to Congress, December 13, 1793.—The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, vol. 33, p. 166 (1940).
Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive. And with it, everything honorable and glorious.
George Washington— To the Marquis de Lafayette (15 November 1781).
As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow, that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the Community are equally entitled to the protection of civil Government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.
George Washington— Letter to Roman Catholics (15 March 1790).
When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.
George Washington— Letter to Edmund Pendleton (22 January 1795).
Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.
George Washington— George Washington, speech to the Constitutional Convention (1787).
My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty... it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
George Washington— George Washington, in The writings of George Washington, American Stationers Co., 1836, p.301
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.
George Washington
The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.
George Washington
