Good morning. This is Mike Slater in San Diego, feeling the great pillow Riley. Stand by for the

O'Reilly update, morning edition. But first, a word, Mike Slater fell in a Fubilo Riley.

On this Thursday morning, I am thinking about success. This is a letter from John Adams

to his wife Abigail, who was back at home. And John said, we can't guarantee success in this war.

But we can do something better. We can deserve it. Gosh, I love that line. Think about how

different that is from the attitude of today, where all that matters is success. Being number one,

getting ahead, getting to the top, plowing over anyone in the way, compromising any principles I

may have to get there. It doesn't matter. But that line from John Adams, I mean, he's saying,

how this war turns out beats me. It's in God's hands. We can't control that, but we can control how

we behave. We can deserve success. So David McCullough, he's doing his research and he came across

that line and he noted it because it's so great. And then we Slater, he was reading a letter from

George Washington and George Washington, used the same line. Hold on, son, it's going on here.

They're quoting something and sure enough, that line is from a play called Kato, a tragedy written

in 1712 that all the founding fathers loved. And it's about Kato the younger fighting against

Julius Caesar. And I love that quote because clearly they didn't inspire their founding fathers.

They didn't know the results of the Revolutionary War before they went into it. Maybe they thought

they were going to win, but it didn't matter. They were just doing the right thing. And they were

going to make sure they deserved to win. Even if in the end God had a different plan.

More coming up. Hello, Ho Ho. Here's an important message from Network Rail for anyone who's

traveling by train this Christmas and New Year. We'll be working over the festive period to make

improvements to the railway. Most of the network remains open, but some train services will be

affected from Sunday the 25th of December until Monday the 2nd of January. So to keep your festive

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