George Washington Farewell Address Neutrality Quotes

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. ~ 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. ~ George Washington

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. (Address to Congress on Resigning Commission Dec 23, 1783) ~ George Washington

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. ~ George Washington

In his farewell address, George Washington warned the people about political parties. Now we see how both Democrats and Republicans have conspired to reduce democratic participation. If this is the best the Democrats and Republicans have to offer, it's time to look elsewhere.Politics should be the prism for our most noble intentions. ~ Marianne Williamson

Honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington

Like the classic it has become, the Farewell Address has demonstrated the capacity to assume different shapes in different eras, to change color, if you will, in varying shades of light. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest ... The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim. ~ George Washington

I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it. ~ George Washington

Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. ~ George Washington

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. ~ George Washington

It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. ~ George Washington

The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. ~ George Washington

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address. ~ Marianne Williamson

The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism ... ~ George Washington

An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address - delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars - counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power. ~ Henry Kissinger

How far you go in life depends on ... ~ George Washington Carver

All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day. ~ George Washington Carver

Character, writes Amitai Etzioni, the George Washington University social theorist, is "the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires."14 ~ Daniel Goleman

He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington ~ William E. Gladstone

I will always remember
when the stars fell down around me
and lifted me up above
the George Washington Bridge. ~ Faith Ringgold

If the minority, and a small one too, is suffered to dictate to the majority, after measures have undergone the most solemn discussions by the representatives of the people, and their will through this medium is enacted into a law, there can be no security for life, liberty, or property; nor, if the laws are not to govern, can any man know how to conduct himself in safety. ~ George Washington

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. ~ George Washington

I wanted to come to Washington, D.C. and help be a transformative President. And I think history, when they look back, will say this is a fellow who knew how to make decisions, and made some tough ones, stood by them, wasn't driven by the latest opinion poll, but was driven by some core principles from which he would not deviate. ~ George W. Bush

There's a natural tendency to sanitize and polish any historical icon whether it be George Washington chopping down the cherry tree or Martin Luther King saying, "I have a dream." ~ Taylor Branch

Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters let it be somewhat grave. ~ George Washington

You just wait and see. The lily-livered b*stards in Washington will demobilize. They'll say they've made the world safe for democracy again. The Russians are not such d*mned fools. They'll rebuild; and with modern weapons. ~ George S. Patton

It is yet to be decided whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse: a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn millions be involved. ~ George Washington

Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive. ~ George Washington

Somewhere under the heavy burden of water going nowhere, under the silence, the old rocks of the river channel waited for the promised resurrection. Promised by whom? Promised by Capt. Joseph "Seldom Seen" Smith; by Sgt. George Washington Hayduke; by Dr. Sarvis and Ms. Bonnie Abbzug, that's whom. But ~ Edward Abbey

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. ~ George Washington

No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way are revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain, I would be helpless. Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets. ~ George Washington Carver

I never say anything of a man that I have the smallest scruple of saying to him. ~ George Washington

The great mass of our Citizens require only to understand matters rightly, to form right decisions. ~ George Washington

The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the back of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that nosy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove. ~ Washington Irving

It is incumbent upon every person of every description to contribute to his country's welfare. ~ George Washington

I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him 'father.' ~ Will Rogers

Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability is, an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peacethe next will be drawn in blood. ~ George Washington

And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it. ~ George W. Bush

Nothing is too extravagant to expect from men who conceive they are ungratefully and unjustly dealt by. ~ George Washington

There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity. ~ George Washington