Status Updates From George Washington: Man and ...

Just, wow. Last chapter is by far the best. Wish I had enough space to write all of these quotes, but it would do it injustice. One must read these passages in their entirety to feel the true touch of their power.

154, 155, 156

just pure beauty.

reread them every few months.

“It isn’t pleasant or convenient to have strong passions. I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am carrying a volcano about with me.”

- Woodrow Wilson

few.

“Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please”

Live a life full of action, so when you die you know you have your all.

Our founding fathers knew that political parties would be the death of our democracy. It is insane they foretold this with such omnipresent wisdom.

“Washington came at length to share the Federalist view that their opponents were not the other party, but simply “party,” or “faction”; not the “opposition” who might one day justly inherit the reins of government,”

“(Benjamin) Franklin spoke against a salary for the President, on the grounds that (as British politics dreadfully revealed) a “Post of Honour” that was also a “Place of Profit” was calculated to bring out the worst excesses of ambition and avarice”

GAHDAMN BEN WAS SPITTIN.

LOOK AT OUR PRESIDENT NOW, LOOK AT CONGRESS, LOOK AT THE SUPREME COURT.

ALL BOUGHT OUT THROUGH GIFTS AND LOBBYING AND CORRUPTION.

“The Constitution was workable because the majority of Americans wished it to work. Without that vital element of habitual skill and harmony, all of Washington’s laborers and exhortations would have been in vain.”

Unfortunately feel as though Washington’s labors and exhortations (whatever that word means) have ended up being in vain due to the narcissistic maniac the American people elected for president.

Don’t strive to be perfect, strive to be indispensable.

“The ‘available’ man proved to be, despite all his minor defects, the indispensable man.”

If I may choose one quality in life, I choose persistence.

“They (Congress) found in him a man of quite extraordinary persistence…repetition is vital to an understanding of the nature of the man. We watched him hammering away, in plain, workman-like prose, neither witty nor pompous, neither blustering nor apologetic, until he either gets his way or concludes that he has come to an absolute impasse.”

Page 49, the author describes a portrait of Washington. I believe every man should strive to be described this way. I wish I could fit the whole passage in this comment but Goodreads f**kin character limit won’t let me, “The face that gazes at us from that portrait is of a man in his prime…a man who leads a full and active life and is thereby preserved from boredom or smugness, who is not gnawed by envy…”

Page 18, “Each age seeks its own inspiration or comfort in the past. The dead are merely the dead unless we choose to resurrect them; they live in us and through us. Our interest in them is egocentric: we wish to learn from them what we are like.”