"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
— George Washington

January 1, 1970

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Presidents of the United StatesMilitary leaders from the United StatesFreemasonsFounding Fathers of the United States of AmericaNationalists
Original Language: English

Sources

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).