Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.
More Quotes from John Adams:
Everyone is stable at this time. If their condition appears to weaken, they will be brought to the hospital and either fed intravenously or nose fed,John Adams
The aspiring, noble principle founded in benevolence, and cherished by knowledge I mean the love of power, which has been so often the cause of slavery, has, whenever freedom has existed, been the cause of freedom
John Adams
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
John Adams
Books that cannot bear examination, certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws
John Adams
Consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest of happiness
John Adams
Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.
John Adams
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