Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable.

Men make history, but they can never know the history they are making.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.

I'm one of those people that believes you should start writing before you think you're ready.

...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.

Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.