My question is a simple one. Where is America’s much needed leader in these dark times, for we are surely living in a tyranny of personality domestically and under the threat of a tyranny abroad.
“You will ever remember that all the end of study is to make you a good man and a useful citizen.”
“When legislature is corrupted, the people are undone.”
“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
“The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”
“Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
– John Adams, Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, Dec. 4, 1770.
“A government of laws, and not of men.”
“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”
“I am determined to control events, not be controlled by them.”
“Virtue is not always amiable.”
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”
“The form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”
“Fear is the foundation of most governments.”
“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a disgrace, that two become a law firm, and that three or more become a congress.”
“The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”
“Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.”
“I, poor creature, worn out with scribbling for my bread and my liberty, low in spirits and weak in health, must leave others to wear the laurels which I have sown, others to eat the bread which I have earned. A common case.”
“As to the history of the Revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected ... before a drop of blood was shed.”
“The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical.”
“The prospect is chilling, on every Side. Gloomy, dark, melancholy, and dispiriting. When and where will the light spring up?”
All quotes are by John Adams, in letters, in court, in essays and other writings, and in his speeches.