# George Washington — "compliance with its laws … are duties enjoined by … true liberty" > [!quote] "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all. … Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty." > — George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796 ## Context Published — never spoken — as Washington declined a third term and handed power to an elected successor, the single most consequential precedent in American constitutionalism. The Farewell Address devotes its core to warning that liberty survives only where the people obey the law and the Constitution until they amend it "by an explicit and authentic act," not by force or faction. ## Why this matters The founding anchor of the rule-of-law tradition, from the man who set the precedent that mattered most: a president voluntarily subordinating himself to constitutional limits and leaving office. Washington defines true liberty not as freedom from law but as "compliance with its laws" — the exact inversion of the strongman logic that treats the leader's will as superior to the legal order. Every later president who insisted that no one stands above the law was extending Washington's premise. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Avalon Project (Yale Law School), Washington's Farewell Address, 1796](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp); [George Washington's Mount Vernon, Farewell Address](https://www.mountvernon.org/education/primary-source-collections/primary-source-collections/article/washington-s-farewell-address-1796). - **Status:** Verbatim from the published address. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[John Adams - a government of laws and not of men]] — the founding-era formula stated as a constitutional principle. - [[Gerald Ford - our Constitution works]] — Washington's peaceful-transfer precedent invoked at the moment it was most tested. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]].