The problem with relegating black history to one really short month, the shortest month, is not only are we telling the same stories over and over again - which are amazing, George Washington Carver is incredible, there's nobody like Frederick Douglass - but there are so many.

Karyn Parsons

I'm not from a political family and didn't grow up dreaming of being George Washington. I started working in 8th grade and have held every odd job possible - working in a gravel pit, weighing big wheelers, ticket sales, data base management - but I knew if I worked hard and got experience, I could apply that experience to my next endeavor.

Aaron Schock

George Washington didn't have to make us laugh; he just had to establish precedents and avoid chopping down more cherry trees than he could possibly help. But somewhere along the line, Americans began expecting their presidents to do more than just govern. They also had to make us laugh.

Alexandra Petri

My daughter loves romances. She's a Ph.D student at George Washington University, and when my first book without a clinch cover came out, she said to me: 'Finally, a book I can read on the Metro.'

Ann Maxwell

I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'

Barbara Jordan

When George Washington was elected president, there was no national vote.

Ben Nelson

You think of George Washington, this man who was larger than life, and in some ways he was. But at the same time, he's just a person.

Benjamin Walker

We need a Donald Trump more than we've ever needed anybody since George Washington.

Bobby Knight

Smart and savvy, the fearless female member of George Washington's Secret Six is a testament to the strong women who have helped to alter the course of history in this great nation, both in terms of large-scale battles and in the new opportunities they have helped create for future generations through their own fearless examples.

Brian Kilmeade

Annie Lee Smith was my mother's name. My father's name was George Washington Smith. I have to tell you, I got all of my attributes from them, obviously, the tangibles, the intangibles. Particularly my work ethic, my dedication.

Bruce Smith

There were people who said the Society of Cincinnati in the American revolution, of which George Washington was one of the shining lights, was a branch of the Illuminati.

Carroll Quigley

My definition, a definition in the drill books from the time that General Von Steuben wrote the regulations for General George Washington, the definition of the object of military training is success in battle... It wouldn't be any sense to have a military organization on the backs of the American taxpayers with any other definition.

Chesty Puller

Black people have been qualified to be president for hundreds of years. George Washington Carver could have been president. I could go on with a list of black men that were qualified to be the president of the United States. So the Obama victory is progress for white people.

Chris Rock

The library of my elementary school had this great biography section, and I read all of these paperback biographies until they were dog-eared. The story of Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Curie and Martin Luther King and George Washington Carver and on and on and on.

Christine Quinn

It instantly felt like, for me as an actor that I justified, I was able to draw a direct relation between Chris the actor and being George Washington.

Christopher Jackson

I was a freelancer at CNN during the second semester of my senior year at George Washington University.

Dana Bash

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.

David Henry Hwang

I grew up at 16 years old driving trucks across the George Washington Bridge.

Don Sherwood

It is hard for anyone who discovers George Washington not to write about him, perhaps because he is so hard to discover and such a surprise when you do.

Edmund Morgan

I went to college, George Washington University, and played softball there. I also played professionally but with the real goal of being an Olympian and making the Olympic team.

Elana Meyers

I played softball at George Washington University, and then I played professionally for the Mid-Michigan Ice. I had a couple of tryouts with the U.S. Olympic Team, but I don't know if I have a word to describe how bad one of the tryouts was. It was the worst tryout in the history of tryouts. It was that bad.

Elana Meyers