Quotes by : Joseph J. Ellis

If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps....

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective....

Ordinary British soldiers harbored several strange preconceptions of their own. Some were surprised that....

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

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

Antislavery idealists might prefer to live in some better world, which like all such places was too good....

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We....

The strategic center of the rebellion was not a place – not New York, Philadelphia, not the Hudson....

Clinton had displayed his lifelong tendency to make enemies of all his superiors, who never seemed to....

It was no accident that the beau ideal of his (John Adams') political philosophy was balance, since he....