Henry Cabot Lodge: “It is impossible to determine with perfect accuracy any man's motives in what he says or does.”

It was a difficult thing for men who had been born colonists to rise to a sense of national opportunities, but Washington passed at a single step from being a Virginian to being an American, and in so doing he stood alone.

They had listened to a speech which was not equaled in meaning and spirit in American history until, eighty years later, Abraham Lincoln stood upon the slopes of Gettysburg and uttered his immortal words upon those who died that the…

Washington was wholly free from the vulgar ambition of the usurper, and the desire of mere personal aggrandizement found no place in his nature.

He accomplished this great labor more successfully by honest and lawful methods than if he had taken the path of the strong-handed savior of society, and his work in this field did more for the welfare of his country than all his battles.