President George Washington, First Annual Message to Congress (“State of the Union”) January 8, 1790
Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.
Nor am I less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is proportionably essential.
Source and Full Text: George Washington: “First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 8, 1790. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
