The design features a 72-foot (22 m) long stone wall with a one-third larger than life-sized statue of a sitting Mason, his legs crossed, and a circular pool with a fountain.

[8] Mason leans back on his left hand to ponder something from Cicero's 44 BC treatise De Officiis, which he holds closed on his right index finger.

Two other volumes, John Locke's 1706 posthumously published Of the Conduct of the Understanding and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Du Contract Social (1762), sit on the bench to Mason's left.

[11] Underneath the trellis are three walls with inscriptions that are 4 feet (1.2 m) high,[11] which include the following quotes: "This was George Mason, a man of the first order of wisdom among those who acted on the theatre of the revolution, of expansive mind, profound judgment, cogent in argument.... Thomas Jefferson, 1821"[12] "Regarding slavery.... that slow poison, which is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people.

Taught to regard a part of our own species in the most abject and contemptible degree below us, we lose that idea of the dignity of man, which the hand of nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes.... George Mason, July 1773"[12] "I recommend it to my sons.... never to let the motives of private interest or ambition to induce them to betray, nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace or the fear of danger or of death deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born.

George Mason, March 1773"[12] "All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural rights... among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.