Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.

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

I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.

Washington was a man of exceptional, almost excessive self-command, rarely permitting himself any show of discouragement or despair.

Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision.

First of all, you can make the argument that there's no such thing as the past. Nobody lived in the past.

There is a human longing to go back to other times. We all know how when we were children we asked our parents, "What was it like when you were a kid?" I think it probably has something to do with our survival as a species.