You learn something new every day.
I discovered a rather interesting quote by the Founding Father on here today. As George Washington once said:
“No man can rightly govern a nation without the Bible.”
That’s pretty nice to hear. There’s just one teensy little problem: he very likely never said that.
From Mount Vernon’s website:
“The quote is frequently misattributed to Washington, particularly in regards to his farewell address of 1796. The origin of the misquote is, perhaps, a mention of a similar statement in a biography of Washington first published in 1835. However, the quote that appeared in the biography has never been proven to have come from Washington.”
The quote from the biography itself doesn’t mention either the Bible or the nation, not to mention that our first president had been dead for nearly 40 years by the time it first appeared in print.
So what do you think? Is it a window onto Washington’s beliefs or is it in the same category as “I cannot tell a lie?”
T9R