Quotes from John Jakes

the public was tired of divisive politics, tired of radical social programs.

And with fear of change perplexes monarchs

I submit that we are not arguing what is or is not good business. We are arguing the choice of liberty or tyranny. Courage or cowardice!

in 1790, had discovered a population nearing four million, of which, he reported in a dour aside, almost seven hundred thousand were slaves.

Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn at no other.

Anyone who threatens the status quo, no matter how humane and sensible the reason, is usually accused of being a radical of the most extreme sort.

I sometimes think we were immortal fools to start this country with a revolution. It's helped put a stamp of respectability on violence ever since.

The war's military organization was an innocently conceived social society founded by a group, of bored veterans around Christmas 1865. In a law office in Pulaski, Tennessee, the veterans had created a secret fraternity called the Kuklos, after the Greek word for circle. Someone had added clan to reflect the area's Scotch-Irish heritage, and the whole thing had been transmuted

There are no ordained results in this world, I've discovered. The trying is what counts most.

Comes from hunting. A hunter making a fast shot is said to snap it off, never certain he'll hit the target. It's the same with this type of camera, there's no way to see what the lens sees. You aim, hope—and snap.

Pop used to say he hated to take time from books to earn a living. Man's never lonely with a book in his pocket, he'd say. Books gives a man ten thousand friends. Some are smart, some are funny, some are just pleasant for passing the time, but they're all good.

But that's the purpose of education! To begin to understand! Then to want to understand!

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.