Preston

“I have often wondered about a paradox in American government: Every four years, voters elect a president and in California a governor, the only officeholders elected by all the people; then, the same people in their individual districts turn around and elect a legislature and congress that is often controlled by the opposing party, enabling it to prevent the president or governor from carrying out the things they elected him or her to do.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“all of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states, the states created the federal government. . .”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“the hardest of war’s hard truths—that for a new nation to live, young men must die, often alone, usually in pain, and sometimes to no obvious purpose. He, more than anyone, would be responsible for ordering those men to their deaths.”
― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777

“Thomas Paine, who had a shrewd eye for military matters, was closer to the mark in a public letter to Admiral Howe published in early 1777. “In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in, you had only armies to contend with,” Paine observed. “In this case, you have both an army and a country to combat.”
― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777