Joseph J. Ellis quotes:

Adams had gone to Harvard, Jefferson to William and Mary. Washington had gone to war.

And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.

To my three sons, Peter, Scott, and Alexander who pulled me from the 18th Century and back into the present on a regular basis and therefore made me a better person, thank you. And to my wife, who sits at the table there. Who is right about almost everything.

Like the classic it has become, the Farewell Address has demonstrated the capacity to assume different shapes in different eras, to change color, if you will, in varying shades of light.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

His (Washington's) apparent paralysis was the result of balancing two imperatives: his reputation against the survival of the Continental Army.

Rather than adjust his expectations in the face of disappointment, he (Jefferson) tended to bury them deeper inside himself and regard the disjunction between his ideals and the worldly imperfections as the world's problems rather than his own.

Men make history, but they can never know the history they are making.

Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.

[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots

Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable.

It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential pedigree.

I believe I am an honorable man.

Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.

If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.

Clinton had displayed his lifelong tendency to make enemies of all his superiors, who never seemed to appreciate his advice as much as he thought it deserved.

Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made.

Remember sometimes just the rush of having a crush is a temptation, even if it is inappropriate, but beware of playing with fire, you will get burned.

I'm one of those people that believes you should start writing before you think you're ready.

Grand visions, even those as prescient as Washington's, must nevertheless negotiate the damnable particularities that history in the short run tosses up before history in the long run arrives to validate the vision.

...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.

I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam. For this and any other distortions about my personal life, I want to apologize to my family, friends, colleagues and students. Beyond that circle, however, I shall have no further comment.

I would say readers can trust my work more than anyone else's.

Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.