George Washington

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. I have seen enough of political faction to know that it destroys more...

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. Commerce may be useful; entanglement is another matter. A young republic must not mortgage its judgment to the quarrels of older powers.

The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart-burnings, which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those, who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government.

However combinations or associations of the above description 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.

Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian.

In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.

There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation.

Gilbert Stuart painted me at sixty-four, two years before my death. He never finished the portrait; he kept the original and sold copies to subscribers. He said the unfinished version was worth more to him than any finished one, because he could keep reproducing it. I found this characteristically American — entrepreneurial and slightly dishonest at...