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.

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

[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.

I think [John] Adams was correct when he said that his May resolutions were "an Epocha, a decisive Event," and tantamount to a declaration of independence.

Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.

A man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.

As in all moral panics, an accusation is enough to destroy a person's life. Hysteria trumps evidence.

If I have the courage to acknowledge my limits and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them.

I definitely care about how the concept of New York punk was constructed, and why it mattered. But I wasn't gonna do that. Partly because I'm not a great journalist...

Philosophy and the arts are but a manifestation of the intelligible ideas that move the public mind; and thus they become visible images of the nations whence they emanate.

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

We are each responsible for our own life-no other person can be.

The ocean, after all, is not about stability but about change. Change is normal. Everything changes. All the time.