I’ve read several of McCullough’s books – The Great Bridge, Truman, Johnstown Flood. Always enjoyed them. I’ve been struggling a bit with this one. I don’t think it’s the book, I think I’m just tired of the subject. I just finished a biography of George Mason and another of George Washington, so the information is getting repetitive.
Few tidbits about the book……
Interesting that Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2nd, not July 4th.
John Adams was a quote machine: “Facts are stubborn things”.
“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.”
“Pen, ink, and paper and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking.”
“We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular Governments. But there is great Danger, that those Governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear, that in every assembly, Members will obtain an Influence, by Noise not sense. By Meanness, not Greatness. By Ignorance not Learning. By contracted Hearts not large souls.”
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Everything comes in time to those who can wait.
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
Be smarter than other people, just don't tell them so.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.
Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone.
We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.
Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles but today it means getting along with people.
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.
All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?
The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.
Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions they pass no criticisms.
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.
The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.
I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.
In Genesis, it says that it is not good for a man to be alone but sometimes it is a great relief.
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results.
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls the most massive characters are seared with scars.
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
The years teach much which the days never know.
It required a strong heart to stand up against such talk, but I urged my people to be quiet and not to begin a war.
Jealousy contains more of self-love than of love.
My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.
Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
Active Evil is better than Passive Good.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
Knowledge is not eating, and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation, not an embrace.
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.
If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.
While the river of life glides along smoothly, it remains the same river only the landscape on either bank seems to change.
You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.
I may be a living legend, but that sure don't help when I've got to change a flat tire.
Education, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.
An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness.
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
One man with courage makes a majority.
Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Faith, there hath been many great men that have flattered the people who ne'er loved them.
Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
There must be a day or two in a man's life when he is the precise age for something important.
Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.
But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities.
Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.
Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef love, like being enlivened with champagne.
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
The best things in life are unexpected - because there were no expectations.
He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
Tis the business of little minds to shrink but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.
Money often costs too much.
On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people and then I go home alone.
Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.
Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off.
The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.
In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
Every artist was first an amateur.
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish. God Almighty made 'em to match the men.
I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder.
The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.
Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
I lived the true American dream, because I was able to pursue what I set as my goals at a very young age.
Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
Spend some time this weekend on home improvement improve your attitude toward your family.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
What is art? Nature concentrated.
It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
Love is the greatest refreshment in life.
There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.
Life is not fair get used to it.
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.
A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.
The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.
He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.
The best mind-altering drug is the truth.
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
He who has health, has hope and he who has hope, has everything.
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
Death is a commingling of eternity with time in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
History is the science of things which are not repeated.
It's always too early to quit.
Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.
Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Love is love's reward.
Where there is great love, there are always wishes.
Charity begins at home, but should not end there.
One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.
Successful people make money. It's not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.
But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.
Inspiration in Science may have to do with ideas, but not in Art. In art it is in the senses that are instinctively responsive to the medium of expression.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.
I was sleeping the other night, alone, thanks to the exterminator.
Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship - never.
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.
We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
The child supplies the power but the parents have to do the steering.
How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.
Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools.
I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor.
The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.
My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.
Money is a strange business. People who haven't got it aim it strongly. People who have are full of troubles.
Success is the child of audacity.
The higher the voice the smaller the intellect.
A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.
Great art picks up where nature ends.
Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something.
The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
Men take only their needs into consideration - never their abilities.
The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.
The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
The five separate fingers are five independent units. Close them and the fist multiplies strength. This is organization.
You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work.
Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.
Ah! how annoying that the law doesn't allow a woman to change husbands just as one does shirts.
When you have vision it affects your attitude. Your attitude is optimistic rather than pessimistic.