“Its good to live alone than to live in a bad company”

“System to all things is the soul of business. To execute properly and act maturely is the way to conduct it to your advantage.”

“Is the consideration of a little dirty pelf, to individuals, to be placed in competition with the essential rights & liberties of the present generation, & of millions yet unborn? shall a few designing men for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing at the expence of so much time, blood, & treasure? and shall we at last become the victems of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it heaven! forbid it all, & every state in the union! by enacting & enforcing, efficatious laws for checking the growth of these monstrous evils, & restoring matters in some degree to the pristine state they were in at the commencement of the War. Our cause is noble. It is the cause of Mankind! and the danger to it springs from ourselves—Shall we slumber & sleep then while we should be punishing those miscreants who have brought these troubles upon us, & who are aiming to continue us in them? While we should be striving to fill our Battalions—and devising ways and means to appreciate the currency—On the credit of which every thing depends? I hope not—let vigorous measures be adopted—not to limit the price of articles—for this I conceive is inconsistent with the very nature of things, & impracticable in itself—but to punish speculators—forestallers—& extortioners—and above all—to sink the money by heavy Taxes—To promote public & private Œconomy—encourage Manufactures &ca—Measures of this sort gone heartily into by the several states will strike at once at the root of all our misfortunes, & give the coup-de-grace to British hope of subjugating this great Continent, either by their Arms or their Arts—The first as I have before observed they acknowledge is unequal to the task—the latter I am sure will be so if we are not lost to every thing that is good & virtuous.”

“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all”

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. George Washington, Revolutionary War General and U.S. President”

“Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.”

“To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.”

“Much was to be done by prudence, much by conciliation, much by firmness.”

“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”

“Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.”

“I'll die on my feet before I'll live on my knees!”

“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.”

“But lest some unlucky event should happen unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.”

“No people can be bound to acknowledge the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the united States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency”

“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.”