Perhaps more significant than his experience in Europe, though, was [John] Adams's experience in his own country, and his extensive reading on the history of the English constitution. In 1779, he had an opportunity to try out his ideas by framing the Massachusetts constitution.

More than any other figure in our history [Tomas] Jefferson is responsible for the idea of American exceptionalism.

I think [John Adams] developed a much deeper suspicion of France and the other European powers than he had earlier. He lost much if not all of the utopian thinking about international politics and diplomacy expressed in his Model Treaty of 1776 and became much more cynical about the world.

History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.

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.

[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.