Petra

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
― Henry Kissinger

“The story became a clash between British tyranny and colonial liberty, scheming British officials and supplicating colonists, all culminating in the clash at Lexington and Concord between General Thomas Gage’s “ministerial army” and “the unsuspecting inhabitants” of Massachusetts. All this was conveyed in what we might call the sentimental style of the innocent victim.33 It is impossible to know how much of this cartoonlike version of the imperial crisis Jefferson actually believed and how much was a stylistic affectation.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

“There he gained a reputation among his classmates as an obsessive student, sometimes spending fifteen hours with his books, three hours practicing his violin and the remaining six hours eating and sleeping. He was an extremely serious young man.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

“He sang whenever he was walking or riding, sometimes when he was reading. His former slave Isaac reported that one could “hardly see him anywhar outdoors, but that he was a-singin’.” Bacon confirmed that “when he was not talking he was nearly always humming some tune, or singing in a low voice to himself.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson