John Adams

by David McCullough

“But let no person say what they would or would not do, since we are not judges for ourselves until circumstances call us to act,”

The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.

“Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard under pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their imaginations.”

“the most fiery spirits and flighty geniuses frequently obtained more influence than men of sense and judgment;

That political parties were an evil that could bring the ruination of republican government was doctrine he, with others, had long accepted and espoused. “There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures in opposition to each other,”

I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it;

The great threats to the nation, Adams warned, were sophistry, the spirit of party, and “the pestilence of foreign influence.”

Nearby Georgetown, however, was “the very dirtiest hole I ever saw.”

“The internal intrigues of our monied and landed and slaved aristocracies are and will be our ruin.”