John Adams by David McCullough

• "All that part of Creation that lies within our observation is liable to change. Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted." - John Adams, 39
• "he would bend his whole soul to the law. He would let nothing distract him...'Reputation,' wrote Adams, 'ought to be the perpetual subject of my thoughts, and aim of my behavior.'" - 46
• "Why have I not genius to start some new thought?...Some thing that will surprise the world?" - John Adams, 47
• "The first news of the Stamp Act reached the American colonies during the last week of May 1765 and produced an immediate uproar, and in Massachusetts especially...The new law, the first British attempt to tax Americans directly, had been passed by Parliament to help pay for the cost of the French and Indian War and to meet the expense of maintaining a colonial military force to prevent Indian wars." - 59
• "above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books." - John Adams, 64
• "Pen, ink, and paper and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking." - John Adams, 66
• "The happiness of the people was the purpose of government...and therefore that form of government was best which produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number." - 102
• "Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." - John Adams, 103
• "We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world." - John Adams, 127
• "With independence proclaimed, confederation - a working union of the colonies - had become the focus of 'spirit' animating the delegates. Union was as essential as independence, nearly all contended - indeed, more important in the view of many - and the issues to be resolved were formidable." - 146
• "The confederacy is to make us one individual only; it is to form us, like separate parcels of metal, into one common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate individuality, but become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the confederacy." - John Adams, 147
• "As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world." - 225
• "Everything in life should be done with reflection." - John Adams, 259
• "A chronic acquirer, Jefferson is not known to have ever denied himself anything he wished in the way of material possessions or comforts." - 319
• "One had only to stand on any London bridge, said a guidebook, to see fleets of ships 'carrying away the manufactures of Britain and bringing back the produce of the whole earth,' a spectacle illustrating Adams' chief concern as ambassador, since none was American." - 341
• "Before any great things are accomplished, he wrote to a correspondent, 'a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.'" - 364
• "I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." - Thomas Jefferson, 371
• "He could not accept the idea of enshrining reason as a religion, as desired by the philosophes. 'I know not what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists.'" - 418
• "How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of parts." - John Adams, 422
• "The one, Hamilton, disliked and distrusted the French, while, for the good of the American economy, strongly favoring better relations with Britain. The other, Jefferson, disliked and distrusted the British, while seeing in France and the French Revolution the embodiment of the highest ideals of the American Revolution." - 436
• "Written in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions declared that each state had a 'natural right' to nullify federal actions it deemed unconstitutional. The states were thus to be the arbiters of federal authority." - 521
• "Washington's death had seemed to mark the close of one era; the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte ushered in another." - 534-5
• "Despite the malicious attacks on him, the furor over the Alien and Sedition Acts, unpopular taxes, betrayals by his own cabinet, the disarray of the Federalists, and the final treachery of Hamilton, he had, in fact, come very close to winning [a second term] in the electoral count." - 556
• "Were it not for John Adams making peace with France, there might never have been a Louisiana Purchase." - 586
• "Unlike Jefferson, who seldom ever marked a book, and then only faintly in pencil, Adams, pen in hand, loved to add his comments in the margins. It was part of the joy of reading for him, to have something to say himself, to talk back to, agree or take issue with, Rousseau, Condorcet, Turgot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Adam Smith, or Joseph Priestly." - 619

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

• "George Washington was always a man who monitored his every move." - 18
• "The proper degree of familiarity between governors and the governed would be an absorbing preoccupation throughout his career." - 25
• "he was able to corroborate the prevalent suspicion in Williamsburg that the French planned to encircle the British by uniting their Louisiana territory with Canada and the Great Lakes." - 33-4
• "Destiny had now conferred upon Washington a pivotal place in colonial, and even global, affairs, for the Jumonville incident was recognized as the opening shot that precipitated the French and Indian War, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War. In the words of Sir Horace Walpole in London, 'The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire.'" - 45
• "The Fort Necessity debacle pointed up Washington's inexperience. Historians have rightly faulted him for advancing when he should have retreated; for fighting without awaiting sufficient reinforcements; for picking an indefensible spot; for the slapdash construction of the fort; for alienating his Indian allies; and for shocking hubris in thinking that he could defeat an imposing French force." - 49
• "Washington made a point of hanging people in public to deter others. His frontier experience only darkened his view of human nature, and he saw people as motivated more by force than by kindness." - 65
• "This young careerist brooded interminably over the discrimination leveled against colonial officers and betrayed a heightened sense of personal injustice -- feelings that would assume a more impressive and impersonal ideological form during the American Revolution." - 69
• "Human affairs are always checkered and vicissitudes in this life are rather to be expected than wondered at." - George Washington, 91
• "He practiced a minimalist art in politics, learning how to exert maximum leverage with the least force." - 99
• "That the slaves at Mount Vernon could move about without supervision runs counter to the common view of slavery as a system enforced only by the daily terror of whips and shackles....the only way to control a captive population was to convince them that runaways would be severely punished." - 116
• "Preoccupied with time pieces throughout his life, Washington aspired to stand at the center of an orderly, clockwork universe." - 119
• "Washington exemplified the self-invented American, forever struggling to better himself and rise above his origins." - 123
• "What has mystified posterity and puzzled some of his contemporaries was that Washington's church attendance was irregular; that he recited prayers standing instead of kneeling; that, unlike Martha, he never took communion; and that he almost never referred to Jesus Christ, preferring such vague locutions as 'Providence,' 'Destiny,' the 'Author of our Being,' or simply 'Heaven.' Outwardly at least, his Christianity seemed rational, shorn of mysteries and miracles, and nowhere did he directly affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ." - 131
• "On Friday, August 5, 1774, George Washington's life changed forever when he was elected one of seven Virginia delegates to the general congress that would meet in Philadelphia, to be known as the First Continental Congress." - 171
• "I shall constantly bear in mind that, as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when those liberties are firmly established." - George Washington, 278
• "With a mind neither quick nor nimble, Washington lacked the gift of spontaneity and found it difficult to improvise on the spot." - 305
• "A leitmotif of his wartime letters was that the shortsighted states would come to ruin without an effective central government. Increasingly Washington took a scathing view of lax congressional leadership." - 328
• "For Washington, the French alliance never flowed smoothly. The bulk of France's fleet remained based in the Caribbean, which hindered joint operations, and the alliance with a mighty power placed Washington in an uncomfortably subservient position." - 349
• "Ever since Valley Forge, Washington had lamented the profiteering that deprived his men of critically needed supplies, and he remained contemptuous of those who rigged and monopolized markets, branding them 'the pests of society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America'" - 352
• "To compel a people to remain in a state of desperation and keep them at enmity with us...is playing the whole game against us." - George Washington, 360
• "Washington viewed the restoration of American credit as the country's foremost political need, and he supported loans and heavy taxation to attain it." - 369
• "The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy age of ignorance and superstition, but at an epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period." - George Washington, 443
• "For all of Washington's professions of modesty, the though of his high destined niche in history was never far from his mind. Few historical figures have so lovingly tended their image." - 471
• "Less than a year after laying down his commission at Annapolis, the American Cincinnatus, badly strapped for cash, was reduced to a bill collector." - 479
• "In addition to his better-known title of father of his country, Washington is also revered in certain circles as the Father of the American Mule." - 484
• "Deafness can be an isolating experience, especially for a president. People would naturally have waited for him to respond to statements before proceeding with the conversation; to conceal his deafness, a self-conscious Washington may well have feigned hearing what they said and sat there in silence." - 581
• "Unlike Washington, Jefferson regarded the French Revolution as the proud and inevitable sequel to the American Revolution." - 600
• "'When he entered a room where we were all mirth and in high conversation, all were instantly mute.' When this happened, Washington would 'retire, quite provoked and disappointed.' It is a powerful commentary on the way in which fame estranged Washington from the casual pleasures of everyday life, making it hard for him to get the social solace he needed." - 616
• Hamilton "considered speculation to be an inescapable, if unsavory, aspect of functioning financial markets." - 621
• Jefferson "believed that Hamilton, to consolidate federal power and promote a northern financial cabal, wanted to make the federal debt so gigantic that it would never be extinguished." - 631
• "Washington and Hamilton had the thankless task of implementing the first tax systems in a country with a deeply ingrained suspicion of all taxes." - 636
• "Unlike his fellow planters, who tended to regard banks and stock exchanges as sinister devices, Washington grasped the need for these instruments of modern finance...With this stroke, he endorsed an expansive view of the presidency and made the Constitution a living, open-ended document. The importance of his decision is hard to overstate, for had Washington rigidly adhered to the letter of the Constitution, the federal government might have been stillborn." - 650
• "America's fervent attachment to France arose from gratitude for its indispensable help during the Revolutionary War, and no country saluted its revolution with more fraternal warmth. In a variety of ways, the French Revolution had been spawned by its American predecessor, which had bred dreams of liberty among French aristocrats who fought in the war, then tried to enshrine its principles at home." - 658
• "The entire project gratified Washington's vanity on another level: people assumed that the new city would be named either Washington or Washingtonople. In September Washington learned that the commissioners had indeed decided, without fanfare, to call the city Washington and the surrounding district Columbia, giving birth to Washington, D.C." - 663
• "The Hamiltonian party called itself Federalists, implying that it alone supported the Constitution and national unity. It took a robust view of federal power and a strong executive branch, and it favored banks and manufacturing as well as agriculture. Elitist in its politics, it tended to doubt the wisdom of the common people, but it also included a large number of northerners opposed to slavery. The Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans to suggest that they alone could save the Constitution from monarchical encroachments." - 671
• "Developments in France only aggravated the growing discord in American politics. Regarding the French revolutionaries as kindred spirits, Republicans rejoiced at the downfall of the Bourbon dynasty, while Federalists, dreading popular anarchy, dwelled on the grisly massacres." - 689