I.B. George Quotes

Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability is, an opportunity will never again offer to cancel another in peacethe next will be drawn in blood.

The liberality of sentiment toward each other, which marks every political and religious denomination of men in this country, stands unparalleled in the history of nations.

To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole is indispensable.

I consider it an indubitable mark of mean-spiritedness and pitiful vanity to court applause from the pen or tongue of man.

Honesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just.

I had rather be in my grave than in my present situation, I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world; and yet they charge me with wanting to be a king.

I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate.

I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.... Tis well.

The determinations of Providence are always wise, often inscrutable; and, though its decrees appear to bear hard upon us at times, is nevertheless meant for gracious purposes.

There is an indissoluble union between a magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.

Letters of friendship require no study.

Providence has done, and I am persuaded is disposed to do, a great deal for us; but we are not to forget the fable of Jupiter and the countryman.

[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character.

Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin on the whole.

There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness.

Alas! Our dancing days are no more. We wish, however, all those who have a relish for so agreeable and innocent an amusement all the pleasure the season will afford them.

[L]eave nothing to the uncertainty of procuring a warlike apparatus at the moment of public danger.

We are not to expect perfection in this world; but mankind, in modern times, have apparently made some progress in the science of government.

Let your countenance be pleasant, but in serious matters let it be somewhat grave.

Diffidence in an officer is a good mark because he will always endeavor to bring himself up to what he conceives to be the full line of his duty.

We should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.

Did I say the book of nature is a catechism? Yes, But, after it answers the first question with "God," nothing but questions follow.

The whole thing about elections in Liberia - it's not about the way you take care of people, it's not about the heart, it's about education, according to the perception of some people.

I am the elected president of Liberia, not Ellen Sirleaf. They stole my victory, and I am here to say loud and clear that I am the winner of the elections.

Freedom that lacks moral truth becomes its own worst enemy.

The world needs a pastor, whether it knows it or not.

The papacy is an impossible job. So the best thing Catholics can do for the pope is to pray for him.

Ideas have consequences and bad ideas can have lethal consequences.

In the Catholic view of things, abortion is a justice issue, not an issue of sexual morality... it is a civil rights issue, arguably the greatest civil rights issue of our time.

[Jesus Christ to Pope Francis] is the Lord with whom he speaks for hours every day in prayer. The Risen One who reached out, touched his life, and called him into mission.

The emphasis on the "peripheries" is also a distinctively "Franciscan" way of expressing the pope's respect for untutored popular piety - a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II.

The Guardian,[is] one of the most consistently anti-Catholic newspapers in the world.

A theological time bomb, set to go off with dramatic consequences.

The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican's financial overseer.

What I hope my liberal friends (and I have more than a few) take from this pontificate is that mercy and truth are never separable in Catholic pastoral life.

The people who are behind the curve of the Catholic future are the institutional-maintenance types.

The pope [Francis] knows that the marriage culture is in crisis throughout the world, and so is the family.

"You don't believe what you read in the papers about anything else; why do you believe it about the pope?" That's where I'd start.

The dynamically orthodox orders of religious women will continue to grow, and the dying orders, which long ago opted for the lightest of Catholic Lite, will continue to die.

Younger theologians will continue to pursue and understand truth rather than deconstructing it, as a lot of their elders seemed to want to do.

The only future is intentional Catholicism, evangelical Catholicism.

[Pope Francis] has felt the mercy of God in his own life and wants to share that experience with others.

In the Vatican, if you don't get something new done quickly you may not get it done at all.

[Pope Francis] is 78 years old and knows that his will be a short pontificate.

I hope ["reanimated the papacy"] means that the new interest in the pope evokes a new interest in the Church's teaching, of which the pope is the custodian.

[Pope] Francis ought to be taken at his word when he says, as he has often done, that he is a son of the Church who believes and teaches what the Catholic Church believes and teaches.

There's an obvious investment in some media circles in the "narrative" of "the pope who's finally going to get with it."

[Pope] Francis communicates the pastoral embrace of the Church, the breadth and inclusiveness of Catholicism symbolized by the Bernini colonnade around St. Peter's Square, in a powerful way.

The impact remains to be seen; I don't think we can measure the enduring impact of John Paul II, for example, for another hundred, perhaps two hundred, years.

An eighty-nine year old kid from Boston playing a blues in New Orleans takes a lot of chutzpah.