[John Adams's] vividly descriptive prose is supremely quotable. Adams wears his heart on his sleeve and reveals all of his ambitions, doubts, and insecurities, especially in his diary, which is one of the greatest and most readable in all of American literature.

[John] Adams was arguing that a separate social order existed that needed to be embodied in senates and his fellow Americans could not accept this and accused him rightly of being obsessed with the English constitution.

It was [John's Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people.

[John Adams] is impressed with [Tomas] Jefferson's learning, but noted his silence during the debates in the Congress: "I never heard him utter three Sentences together."

The Declaration [of Independence] was a committee report, and [Tomas] Jefferson was simply the draftsman. [John] Adams's crucial role in bringing about independence in the Continental Congress has tended to get forgotten.

Americans, [John Adams] wrote in 1780, believed that their "revolution is as much for the benefit of the generality of Mankind in Europe, as for their own."

[John Adams] diary, of course, is even more revealing of his feelings. Both his letters to [his wife] Abigail and his diary tell us what he really thinks about people and events.