Founding Partisans Quotes

“George Washington presided over the Philadelphia convention. When the delegates couldn’t decide what powers to give the president under their new scheme, they took comfort from assuming Washington would be the first president and would figure things out as he went along.”
― H.W. Brands, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics

“But I contemplate it without terror or dismay. Aut transit, aut finit”—I cross, or I come to an end. “If finit, which I cannot believe, and do not believe, there is then an end of all. But I shall never know it and why should I dread it, which I do not. If transit, I shall ever be under the same constitution and administration of Government in the Universe and I am not afraid to trust and confide in it.”
― H.W. Brands, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics

“know. That is a subject which I do not choose to converse upon.’ ” She proceeded to tell Jefferson a story: “I have heard of a clergyman who upon some difficulty amongst his people took a text from these words—‘and they knew not what to do’—from whence he drew this inference, that when a people were in such a situation that they do not know what to do, they should take great care that they do not do they know not what.”
― H.W. Brands, Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics