At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Tom Hooper had done 'John Adams,' and David Lynch did 'Twin Peaks.' I figured I could do eight hours of television, and I wanted to.
We all should be concerned if our kids don't know who Sandra Day O'Connor, John Adams, and Ronald Reagan are.
I know that John Adams has had a very hard time directing French ensembles.
Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.
Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.
My first day on the set of 'John Adams', I was just supposed to fly to Virginia for a costume fitting. But the director figured, why not shoot it, too? So they threw me into a dress that didn't fit, gave me lines I hadn't seen, in a dialect I didn't know, and two screaming, arching infants.
The presidency made John Adams an old man long before there was television. As early as the nation's first contested presidential election, with Adams and Jefferson running to succeed Washington, you had a brutal, ugly, vicious campaign that was divisive and as partisan as anything we're experiencing today.
I want to collect more records from terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans. The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the Revolution over! John Adams said it was the spark that led to our war for independence, and I'm proud of standing for the Bill of Rights, and I will continue to stand for the Bill of Rights.
Hyperbole has been part of elections since the days of John Adams, and there's nobody better than Joe Biden to give us a little hyperbole, as we all know.
