John Adams by David McCullough

Winner of the 2002 Pulitzer Prize - Biography
GREAT BOOK. Read it.

"He perceived life as a stirring drama like that of the theater, but with significant differences, as he wrote to a classmate, Charles Cushing:

'Upon common theaters, indeed, the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own approbation. But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss! On the contrary if conscience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value' " (38).

"It was, in all, a declaration of Adams's faith in education as the bulwark of the good society, the old abiding faith of his Puritan forebears. The survival of the rights and liberties of the people depended on the spread of wisdom, knowledge, and virtue among all the people, the common people, of whom he, as a farmer's son, was one. 'I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading,' Adams had written in his diary at age twenty-five, while still living under his father's roof" (223).

" 'If they are wise they will improve . . . the bloom of their health in acquiring such a fund of learning and knowledge as may render them useful to themselves, and beneficial to society, the great purpose for which they were sent into the world . . . To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words' " (310).