Farewell Address Quotes & Sayings

Washington's address is virtually unknown today and has not been seen in most American history textbooks in nearly four decades. Perhaps it is because of all the religious warnings Washington made in his 'Farewell Address.' — David Barton

In his farewell address, George Washington warned the people about political parties. Now we see how both Democrats and Republicans have conspired to reduce democratic participation. If this is the best the Democrats and Republicans have to offer, it's time to look elsewhere.Politics should be the prism for our most noble intentions. — Marianne Williamson

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address. — Marianne Williamson

An alliance with France was enlisted in the war for independence from Britain, then loosened in the aftermath, as France undertook revolution and embarked on a European crusade in which the United States had no direct interest. When President Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address - delivered in the midst of the French revolutionary wars - counseled that the United States "steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" and instead "safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies," he was issuing not so much a moral pronouncement as a canny judgment about how to exploit America's comparative advantage: the United States, a fledgling power safe behind oceans, did not have the need or the resources to embroil itself in continental controversies over the balance of power. — Henry Kissinger

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. (Address to Congress on Resigning Commission Dec 23, 1783) — George Washington

Truman's farewell address on January 15, 1953, delivered five days before he left the renovated White House, is to this day one of the best speeches of the Cold War, containing insightful analysis and a prediction of how, decades later, it would end. "I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the 'Cold War' began to overshadow our lives," he told the American people, speaking late at night from the Oval Office. Winning the Cold War wouldn't be easy - or fast - but the United States, he firmly believed, would win simply by holding the line. — Garrett M. Graff

Like the classic it has become, the Farewell Address has demonstrated the capacity to assume different shapes in different eras, to change color, if you will, in varying shades of light. — Joseph J. Ellis

When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterised her thoughts, it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in her throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken. — Theodore Dreiser

Attorney General John Ashcroft bid farewell to the Justice Department with a goodbye address. The voluntary resignation came as a bit of a disappointment to the attorney general, who had hoped to be raptured out of office. — Jon Stewart

It is interesting to note that during the last ten years Washington's 'Farewell Address' has begun to reappear in college textbooks - minus the four religious warnings. — David Barton