[John] Adams was the best and most colorful stylist among the Founders. Although [Tomas] Jefferson is widely regarded as the smoothest writer, Adams is by far the most engaging and imaginative.

History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.

The relationship between [John] Adams and [Tomas] Jefferson was extraordinary. They differed on every conceivable issue, except on the Revolution and the love of their country.

[Benjamin] Franklin may be a great philosopher, [John Adams] told his diary in 1779, but "as a Legislator in America he has done very little."

By 1782 [John Adams] had come to feel for [Benjamin] Franklin "no other sentiments than Contempt or Abhorrence."

If history teaches anything, it teaches humility.

Americans, [John Adams] wrote in 1780, believed that their "revolution is as much for the benefit of the generality of Mankind in Europe, as for their own."

More than any other figure in our history [Tomas] Jefferson is responsible for the idea of American exceptionalism.

[Tomas] Jefferson believed that the United States was a chosen nation with a special responsibility to spread democracy around the world.

It was [John's Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people.

[John Adams' writings] had indicted the United States for slavishly copying the English constitution by erecting bicameral legislatures in their state constitutions, most drafted in 1776.

The play of a pain is a party.

...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

And while I initially resisted, the thought of touching her, of her wanting me to touch her . . . Well, damn, I just wasn't strong enough to abstain from that.

Madness is born in the blood. It is my birthright.

She is running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment. She's talking like she's Annie Oakley.

I think Detroit shows that we've come to the end of the industrial epoch and have to find a new mode of production.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.

When you bait your hook with your heart, the fish always bite.

Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.