“I am not a Federalist,” he declared in 1789, “because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever.… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

“but heavens! how that man could talk! He electrified large meetings. He had faith—don't you see?—he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid “leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?' I asked. 'Any party,' answered the other. 'He was an—an—extremist.”

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

“For Madison, on the other hand, “a Public Debt is a Public curse,” and “in a Representative Government greater than in any other.”26”

“In a very real sense, we are complicitous in their achievement, since we are the audience for which they were performing; knowing we would be watching helped to keep them on their best behavior.”

“God was not in the details for Jefferson; he was in the sky and stars.”

“But if insecurity was the primal source of Hamilton's incredibly energy, one would have to conclude that providence had conspired to produce at the most opportune moment perhaps the most creative liability in American history.”