Doris Kearns Goodwin > Quotes > Quote > Daphne liked it

“It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed,” Abigail Adams wrote to her son John Quincy Adams in the midst of the American Revolution, suggesting that “the habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin, Leadership: In Turbulent Times