Grand visions, even those as prescient as Washington's, must nevertheless negotiate the damnable particularities that history in the short run tosses up before history in the long run arrives to validate the vision.

...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.

[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots

Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.

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

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

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