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.

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

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.

Architecture has joined the world of fashion, but fashion is passing and architecture is timeless.

That whole country, Malaysia has a history of telling other countries back off, we'll do our business. They're pretty stubborn bunch of people. So they will do what they have to do.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.

All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

The arrows of malevolence ... however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.

There are two kinds of pain: the pain of change and the pain of never changing and remaining the same.

When I was young, to have a big nose, big lips or dark skin was the worst. You were the wretched.

There is no such thing as a stationary tradition. Traditions are always developing, living things.

Americans spend more money on Botox, face lifts and tummy tucks than on the age-old scourges of polio, small pox and malaria.