Wit & Attitude Quote by George Washington

Washington isn’t just scolding bad manners here; he’s drawing a bright moral border in a culture where authority depended as much on self-command as on rank. “Profane cursing and swearing” gets framed as more than a personal habit: it’s a public contaminant. The phrasing is calibrated to make the practice socially radioactive. By calling it “foolish and wicked,” he fuses incompetence with sin, stripping profanity of any romantic aura of toughness. Then he drives the nail in with class-inflected language: “mean and low.” In an 18th-century world obsessed with reputation, that’s not casual insult; it’s a demotion.

The subtext is discipline. Washington’s leadership brand was built on restraint, order, and the projection of civic virtue at a time when the American experiment still looked like a high-risk improvisation. Profanity, in this view, isn’t authenticity; it’s evidence of a person unfit for responsibility, someone who can’t govern himself and therefore can’t be trusted to govern anything else. “Every person of sense and character” is a rhetorical trap: agree with him or volunteer yourself as senseless and characterless. It’s social pressure as policy.

The intent also reflects the era’s anxiety about legitimacy. A new nation needed to distinguish itself from the supposed corruption and decadence of old empires. Policing language becomes a way to police the republic’s image. Washington isn’t merely banning words; he’s trying to manufacture a citizenry that looks worthy of independence.