“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
“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
“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. ”
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George Washington
“The common and continual mischief's [sic] of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion.”
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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
“the government both in the executive and the legislative branches must carry out in good faith the platforms upon which the party was entrusted with power. But the government is that of the whole people; the party is the instrument through which policies are determined and men chosen to bring them into being. The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.”
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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
“Those who have committed no faults want no pardon. We are only defending what we deem our indisputable rights.”
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George Washington
“The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to it animosity or two its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and it's interest.”
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George Washington
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government.”
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George Washington
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
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George Washington
“No morn has ever dawned more favourably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present. Wisdom and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm.”
―
George Washington
