Joseph J. Ellis Quotes

13 quotes in 226 categories

• To my three sons, Peter, Scott, and Alexander who pulled me from the 18th Century and back into the present on a regular basis and…
• Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.
• Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable.
• Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made.
• I believe I am an honorable man.
• And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.
• I would say readers can trust my work more than anyone else's.
• I deeply regret having let stand and later confirming the assumption that I went to Vietnam. For this and any other distortions about my personal…
• [quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots
• 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…
• Because he could not afford to fail, he could not afford to trust.
• Chronology, so the saying goes, is the last refuge of the feeble-minded and the only resort for historians.
• It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge…

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