John Ferling Quotes.

11. "At first glance, young John Adams’s obsession with recognition seems odd. In contrast to the great mass of his contemporaries, his yearning was exceptional. Yet when Adams is compared to other high achievers of his generation, his behavior appears more normal. Young Washington sought recognition just as fervently, and he impatiently pursued a commission in the British army during the French and Indian War as the most rapid means of procuring attention. The youthful Thomas Jefferson dreamed of someday sitting on the King’s Council in Virginia, while Alexander Hamilton, born too late to soldier in the war in the 1750s, announced: I contemn the grovling and condition of a Clerk or the like, to which my Fortune, &c., contemns me. He wished for war, through which he could be catapulted into notoriety; his hero was James Wolfe, the British general who died in the assault on Quebec in 1759. Benjamin Franklin, who grew up earlier in Boston, exhibited the same industriousness and ambition that Adams would evince. He mapped out an extensive regimen of self-improvement, as did Adams, and found his role models in Jesus and Socrates. Adams, and many others who would subsequently play an important role in the affairs of early America, were the sort of men that historian Douglass Adair aptly describes as passionately selfish and self-interested, men who shared a common attribute, a love of fame.23"
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

12. "Washington had learned the secrets of inducing others to follow his lead. Washington probably knew more about leadership before he celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday than John Adams discovered in his lifetime."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

13. "One thing is certain, however; whereas it has been almost commonplace among historians to attribute Adams’s opposition to Franklin’s style of diplomacy to simple jealousy, in fact Adams also was critical of his fellow envoy because of a genuine concern that America might be ruined by anything less than a wary, coequal, unbending relationship with its new ally.38"
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

14. "The last officer named was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island; a man of limited education and military experience limited to two years of peacetime militia duty, he nevertheless was destined to be the best of the lot.27"
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

15. "efforts demonstrated that he had little facility for writing propaganda or even for communicating with a broad audience. No rejoinder was more learned than his treatises, but none was so unreadable."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

16. "Adams had little experience working with others in a legislative setting, and his obdurate manner and natural impatience did not fully suit him for such an undertaking. Yet, his courtroom skills and his pluck or pertness, as he referred to it, served him well. Mostly, however, Adams’s star rose because of other factors. The very force of his intellect was crucial to his emergence as an important force in Congress. At each step of his ascent, Adams’s acuity and his imposing intellectual grasp had impressed others."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

17. "In the next two years he would sit on ninety committees, chairing twenty-five. No other congressman came even remotely close to carrying such a heavy work load. Soon he was acknowledged to be the first man in the House, as Benjamin Rush reported.28"
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

18. "The surface causes of Adams’s anxieties are not difficult to discern. Every activist knew the penalty for treason. Every congressman knew that prison, perhaps death, would be his reward if the American rebellion failed."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

19. "It was anything but reassuring to have to tell one’s wife, in Case of real Danger . . . fly to the Woods with our Children."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

20. "But if Adams was certain of the necessity of the war, he found it difficult to reconcile himself to the role he should play in the conflict. Could he morally order other men to risk death on America’s battlefields if he did not likewise face harm? Should he bear arms? Was he less than a man if he did not soldier? Adams struggled with these matters. For a sensitive man such as John Adams, it produced a terrible quandary."
- John Ferling, John Adams: A Life