WASHINGTON, George: "I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet"

George Washington (US Independence leader): “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet” (Susan Ratcliffe, editor, “Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject”, Oxford University Press, 2000, page 223).

[Editor: (1) Washington was a slave owner - so much for the "all men are created equal" and the American Declaration of Independence , and (2) the American Revolution was assertedly about "freedom", "liberty" and "no taxation without representation" but in actuality was about freedom to expand westward into Indian territory - by the 1840s Indians were excluded from territories east of the Mississippi].