As the calendar starts anew, so we seek to begin again. We make resolutions by which we can mitigate our vices and cultivate virtues either new or in need of renewal.
For our citizenship, we can find no better advice than that given by the father of our country, President George Washington. We have, in his own handwriting, a collection of more than 100 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation.” Similar lists originated well before Washington and were popular as part of young people’s education in the Colonies.
Washington copied these rules as a teenager. Yet more than copying on paper, Washington took these rules to mind and to heart. Charles Moore, in an introduction to a 1926 publication of the list, noted: “These maxims were so fully exemplified in George Washington’s life that biographers have regarded them as formative influences in the development of his character.”
