More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.
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As quoted in Washington's Birthday : Its History, Observance, Spirit, and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse (1918) by Robert Haven Schauffler, p. 143.Charles Francis Adams
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When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness.
Charles Sanders Peirce
All of the great works of art, it seems to me, are the ones that have a total disregard for anything else; just a total egotistical self-indulgence.
Nick Cave
We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home.
Jack Valenti
Washington had no smashing, stunning victories. He was not a military genius, and his tactical and strategic maneuvers were not the sort that awed men. Military glory was not the source of his reputation. Something else was involved. Washington's genius, his greatness, lay in his character. He was, as Chateubriand said, a "hero of unprecedented kind." There had never been a great many like Washington before. Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.
Washington fit the 18th-century image of a great man, of a man of virtue. This virtue was not given to him by nature. He had to work for it, to cultivate it, and everyone sensed that. Washington was a self-made hero, and this impressed an 18th-century enlightened world that put great stock in men controlling both their passions and their destinies. Washington seemed to possess a self-cultivated nobility.George Washington
Adams, Charles Francis, Sr.
Adams, James Truslow
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