George Washington Quotes (1732-1799)

• This is the conclusion to an article entitled "Older Ideas of Firearms" by C. S. Wheatley; it was published in the September 1926 issue of Hunter, Trader, Trapper (vol. 53, no. 3), p. 34. Wheatley had referred to George Washington's address to the second session of the first Congress immediately before this passage, which may have given rise to the mistaken attribution. See this piece at Quote Investigator
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington )

• US Senator William Edgar Borah, writing in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 8, Issue 2 (1929), p. 776; this has only rarely begun to be attributed to Washington, since about 2010.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington )

• Oliver Cromwell, letter to Walter Dundas, 12 September 1650; this is also a recent misattribution.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington )

• The earliest source of this quote was a famous anecdote in The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen (1806) by Parson Weems, which is not considered a credible source, and many incidents recounted in the work are now considered to have sprung entirely from Weems’ imagination. This derives from an anecdote of Washington, as a young boy, confessing to his father Augustine Washington that it was he who had cut a cherished cherry tree.
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Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• A modern fabrication, possibly derived from David Barton's claim (Original Intent, p. 85) that "By George Washington’s own words, what youths learned in America’s schools 'above all' was 'the religion of Jesus Christ.'”. Washington did use the phrase "above all the religion of Jesus Christ" on 12 May 1779 in a reply to a petition from a Lenape delegation asking for assistance in promoting the missionary activities of David Zeisberger among their people: "You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention..." He did not say anything about "What students would learn in American schools," though earlier in the same reply he did say "I am glad you have brought three of the Children of your principal Chiefs to be educated with us." While there's nothing in the reply about how those "Children" might be educated (in fact Congress put two of them through Princeton) it's possible that suggested the fabricated portion. See Louise Phelps Kellogg, Frontier Advance on the Upper Ohio 1778-1779 (Madison WI, 1916), pp. 317-324, for the episode. Washington's reply is also found in John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, vol. 15 (Washington D.C., 1936), p. 55
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• A further quote sometimes purported to be from a speech to Congress, January 7, 1790 purportedly in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790, this is actually a corruption of a statement made in his first State of the Union Address, relating to the need for maintaining governmental troops and military preparedness:
   A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.
The proper establishment of the troops which may be deemed indispensable will be entitled to mature consideration. In the arrangements which may be made respecting it it will be of importance to conciliate the comfortable support of the officers and soldiers with a due regard to economy.
• The misquote can be found in the Congressional Record 2008, in a speech delivered by Paul Broun of Georgia.https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRECB-2008-pt10/html/CRECB-2008-pt10-Pg13949.htm
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• Washington is known to have made some official statements of public piety, but this is not one of them. The assertion is very widely reported to have been said in Washington's Farewell Address (17 September 1796), but this is not actually the case, as any search of the documents would reveal. It has also been presented as having been part of his Proclamation on January 1, 1795 of February 19th, 1795 as a day of national Thanksgiving. The oldest form of this saying appears as part of an argument for the existence of God attributed to Washington in an undocumented biography written for children. In A Life of Washington (1836) by James K. Paulding, Washington is quoted as having stated:
 • It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.
(For the context see Paulding's anecdote given below in the section of quotations about Washington.) This is unattributed, and no source other than Paulding is known. In 1864 the words "the aid of a Supreme Being" were replaced by the word "God" in Benjamin Franklin Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (1864), p. 510:
 • It is impossible ... to govern the universe without God...
Three years later, in 1867, Henry Wilson (Testimonies of American Statesmen and Jurists to the Truths of Christianity, American Tract Society) replaced "universe" with "world":
 • It is impossible to govern the world without God.
In 1893 Howard H. Russell (A Lawyer's Examination of the Bible, 1893) added the word "rightly" and the phrase "and the Bible" to create the most commonly cited form:
 • It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.
This form, which is also found in Upper Room Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 3 (23 October 1920), rests on no other authority than Russell, who was born long after Washington had died. It is clearly spurious. The saying is often found attached to genuine material such as Washington's 1795 Thanksgiving proclamation:
 • It is in an especial manner our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God, and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experienced. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. 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.
The first sentence is an almost accurate rendition of one from the official proclamation, being a portion of this segment:
  In such a state of things it is in an especial manner our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience. Deeply penetrated with this sentiment, I, George Washington, President of the United States, do recommend to all religious societies and denominations, and to all persons whomsoever, within the United States to set apart and observe Thursday, the 19th day of February next as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day to meet together and render their sincere and hearty thanks to the Great Ruler of Nations for the manifold and signal mercies which distinguish our lot as a nation...
It is to be noted that there is genuine piety expressed in this statement, but it is not of any sectarian kind, Christian or otherwise. The last portion of the bogus statement which uses it is a truncation of a statement attributed to him in an undocumented biography written for children. In A Life of Washington (1836) by James K. Paulding, Washington is quoted as having stated:
  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 well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
In the spurious version of the Thanksgiving proclamation which uses a portion of this, Washington's allusions to Voltaire's famous statement that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" has been omitted. In the cases of these "quotations" it seems that if statements suitable to their sectarian interests do not exist, some people feel it necessary to invent them.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• Attributed to "The First President of the United States" in "Liberty and Government" by W. M., in The Christian Science Journal, Vol. XX, No. 8 (November 1902) edited by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 465; no earlier or original source for this statement is cited; later quoted in The Cry for Justice : An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest (1915) edited by Upton Sinclair, p. 305, from which it became far more widely quoted and in Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 2d ed., p. 526 (1924). In The Great Thoughts (1985), George Seldes says, p. 441, col. 2, footnote, this paragraph “although credited to the ‘Farewell’ [address] cannot be found in it. Lawson Hamblin, who owns a facsimile, and Horace Peck, America’s foremost authority on quotations, informed me this paragraph is apocryphal.” It is listed as spurious at the Mount Vernon website
 • Unsourced variant : Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• Sometimes rendered : "They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."
 • Both of these are doctored statements that have been widely disseminated as genuine on many anti-semitic websites; They are distortions derived from a statement that was attributed to Washington in Maxims of George Washington about currency speculators during the Revolutionary war, not about Jews: "This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enemy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."
  • More information is available at Snopes. com: "To Bigotry, No Sanction"
• This quotation is a classic anti-semitic hoax, evidently begun during or just before World War Two by American Nazi sympathizers, and since then has been repeated, for example, in foreign propaganda directed at Americans.
• It is knitted from two separate letters by Washington, in reverse chronology, neither of them mentioning Jews
• #The first part of this forgery is from Washington's letter to Edmund Pendleton in November 1779 complaining about black marketeers and others undermining the purchasing power of colonial currency
• #The second part of this fabricated quote is from Washington's letter to Joseph Reed in December 1778 again condemning war profiteers
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• This attribution apparently originated with a statement of a cartoon version of Washington on an episode of The Simpsons. Though not initially presented as a genuine quote this has sometimes been attributed to Washington.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)

• This saying is not found in any source before 2010, when it was posted by The Ignorant Fisherman at Free Republic on 15 February. The language is not that of Washington or his time.
• Wikiquote: "George Washington" (Misattributed:
Statements originally made by others, that have become wrongly attributed to Washington , Spurious attributions:
Statements which evidence indicates are fabrications, never actually said by anyone prior to their being attributed to Washington.)