"Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?"

This quote by Steven Wright is an amusing way of explaining the absurdity of asking someone like George Washington for recognition. It implies that because George Washington was a prominent figure in American history, it would be outrageous to ask him for identification. The quote also implies that George Washington was so famous that he could have simply utilized a quarter, which bears his image, as identification. This quote is an amusing method of mentioning the ridiculousness of asking somebody like George Washington for identification. It also works as a pointer of the significance of George Washington in American history and how his tradition survives on in the kind of the quarter.