"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference -- they deserve a place of honor with all that is good."
--George Washington

"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master".
--George Washington

"A free people ought...to be armed..."
--George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790.

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force!"
--George Washington

It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.
--George Washington

It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being.
It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.
It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and will has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
--George Washington

I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
--George Washington

No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore 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.
--George Washington

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature.  Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."
--George Washington

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
--George Washington

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses
--George Washington