RICHARD BROOKHISER

John Adams and John Quincy Adams had six sons. Two of these were great statesman and four were drunks. For the Adams family it was the White House or the Ale House …. Family pressure is part of what drives people to drink.

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

[Washington had won] a war for independence and then gone home. [He embodied] the legend of the Roman who returned to his plow after saving his country.

Depression manifests itself in a lack of will.

One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.

The Dutch practice euthanasia so briskly that they will kill themselves even before the Islamists get around to it.

Always take a good look at your problems as they are going to be with you for a long time.

Wars cost money.

Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine?

Success can set the table for tragedy if the victors are not careful.

Always take a good look at your problems as they are going to be with you for a long time.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name was Roosevelt. She didn’t have to change her name when she married Franklin.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams had six sons. Two of these were great statesman and four were drunks. For the Adams family it was the White House or the Ale House …. Family pressure is part of what drives people to drink.

Some of your enemies are real enemies and you are just going to have to fight them

Wars cost money.

If they wanted a Christian state, they could have done it. They were writing the rules. They could have put God in the rules.

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

Routine is supposed to be the great deadener of souls; how much worse is the half-completed task, the broken round, the unfulfilled routine?

Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.

Libertarians are believers in small government who really mean it -- no excuses, no exceptions. [For Libertarians], the excesses of government are their best recruiters.

Depression manifests itself in a lack of will.

Only the stupefying ignorance of young women prevents them from comprehending the stupefying emptiness of the men who cluster round them.

Madison lived in his head and public speaking did not come naturally to him.

The Dutch practice euthanasia so briskly that they will kill themselves even before the Islamists get around to it.

[Washington had won] a war for independence and then gone home. [He embodied] the legend of the Roman who returned to his plow after saving his country.

Some lawns have all the cheer of old cemeteries.

One of the benefits of a bad education is the constant pleasure of discovery.

The young women who attract so much attention never change: They are all stupid. They have at best only the crudest notions of their own power, and never calculate motives or consequences. Giving a young woman a young woman's body makes as much sense as giving ten teenagers Lamborghinis and telling them to drive in figure 8s around a parking lot.

Aaron Burr was like a new refrigerator. He was bright, cold and empty.