Established churches not infrequently formed an alliance with the aristocracy, joining arm in arm against change.

Jefferson was the rare student who came to college already knowing that there could be joy in studying.

Jefferson attributes to a college professor and mentor his lifelong habit of questioning conventional wisdom.

The feelings of politicians are rarely transparent.

The author characterizes Hamilton's tone in the Federalist papers by saying that he never spoke of problems but of being at the last stage in the crisis.

For leaders, wars are filled with guesses.

Alexander Hamilton reflected as early as the middle of the Revolutionary War that rallying at the last minute was part of the national character of his countrymen.

Were people to mingle only with those of like mind, every man would be an insulate being." Thomas Jefferson

Pointing out the possible, and expensive, entanglements that could come with widespread commercial enterprise, the author calculates the Great Britain was at war half the time between 1689 and 1783.

Out of Africa, there is always something new.

We just make music. For I never stop working.

You can't raise the standard of women's morals by raising their pay envelope. It lies deeper than that.

Whenever a technology enables people to organize at a pace that wasn't before possible, new kinds of politics emerge.

Pain is to be endured. It ends or it does not.

In clothes clean and fresh there is a kind of youth with which age should surround itself.

I learned the first night that IHOP's not the place to order fish.

I'd really love to meet the guy I'm supposed to be. I'd hire him in a second.

Stimulate the heart to love and the mind to be early accurate, and all other virtues will rise of their own accord, and all vices will be thrown out.

But it is a pretty thing to see what money will do!