“Nobody ever lived in the past.”

“The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.”

“It has been the will of Heaven," the essay began, "that we should be thrown into existence at a period when the greatest philosophers and lawgivers of antiquity would have wished to live...a period when a coincidence of circumstances without example has afforded to thirteen colonies at once an opportunity of beginning government anew from the foundation and building as they choose. How few of the human race have ever had the opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children? How few have ever had anything more of choice in government than in climate?”

“Nothing ever invented provides such sustenance, such infinite reward for time spent, as a good book.”

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. - John Adams”

“I feel that as much as I enjoy loafing, there is something higher for which to live.”

“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.”