Friends never cheat on each other, or take advantage, or lie. Friends do not spy on one another, yet they have no secrets. Friends glory in each other's successes and are downcast by the failures. Friends minister to each other, nurse each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, stand always ready to help. Perfect friendship is rarely achieved, but at its height it is an ecstasy.

Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert.

American is the first democratic nation-state.

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.

Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends.

Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.

I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.