"All well and good, but for our purposes these otherwise-valuable insights are mere subplots almost designed to carry us down side trails while blithely humming a tune about the rough equivalence of forests and trees."
— Joseph J. Ellis (Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation)

"James Jackson actually made menacing faces at the Quakers in the gallery, calling them outright lunatics, then launched into a tirade so emotional and incoherent that reporters in the audience had difficulty recording his words."
— Joseph J. Ellis (Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation)

"One of the petitioners, an infamous do-gooder of uncertain sanity named Warner Mifflin, had actually acknowledged that his antislavery vision came to him after he was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm."
— Joseph J. Ellis (Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation)