John Adams

by David McCullough

You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator. . . . We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. ~Abigail Adams

“Facts are stubborn things,” he told the jury, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

“A man who has not better government of his tongue, no more command of his temper, is unfit for everything but children’s play and the company of boys.”

“I have,” she wrote, “sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creature of theirs.”

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive,” he lectured. “I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”

“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,”