Defiance to constituted authority leaped like a spark from one flammable area to another, growing in heat as it went.
Bernard BailynIt was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.
Bernard BailynUp and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments.
Bernard BailynWhatever deficiencies the leaders of the American Revolution may have had, reticence, fortunately, was not one of them.
Bernard Bailyn