The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.
More Quotes from John Quincy Adams:
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.John Quincy Adams
Shall we have recourse to the art of printing But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.
John Quincy Adams
My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes. This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.
John Quincy Adams
THE WANTS OF MAN Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long. Tis not with me exactly so, But tis so in the song. My wants are many, and if told Would muster many a score And were each wish a mint of gold, I still should long for more. from Oliver Goldsmiths Hermit.
John Quincy Adams
Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.
John Quincy Adams
Where annual elections end where slavery begins.
John Quincy Adams
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