Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.
As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.
Adams was both a devout Christian and an independent thinker, and he saw no conflict in that.
The only way to compose myself and collect my thoughts,” he wrote in his diary,“is to set down at my table, place my diary before me, and take my pen into my hand.
Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison – a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon – Adams told her, “We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of the human experience reaching back infinitely far is available to you?
You can’t learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can’t learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can’t learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.
Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It’s about insects. It will make you feel better.
Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn’t just part of our civic responsibility. To me it’s an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
I think it’s best to pick a biographical subject who lives to a ripe old age. Older people tend to relax and speak their minds. They’re dropping some of the masks that they’ve been wearing. There’s a candor.
The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life is an achievement. To do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.
Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.
Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer.
The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.
My wife, the star I steer by.
I feel that what I do is a calling. I would pay to do what I do if I had to. I will never live long enough to do the work I want to do: the books I would like to write, the ideas I would like to explore.
Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership.