[John Adams] is impressed with [Tomas] Jefferson's learning, but noted his silence during the debates in the Congress: "I never heard him utter three Sentences together."

[John] Adams never hid his jealousy and resentment of the other Founders, especially Benjamin Franklin.

[John Adams] experience with the French philosophers only convinced him further of the need for a bicameral legislature representing the two principal social orders and, equally important, an independent executive.

[John] Adams said his objective in writing his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States and his Davila essays was to counter what he thought was the unfair criticism of the American state constitutions made by the French philosophers, especially [Anne Robert Jacques] Turgot.

Deeply versed in history, [John Adams] said over and over that America had no special providence, no special role in history, that Americans were no different from other peoples, that the United States was just as susceptible to viciousness and corruption as any other nation. In this regard, at least, Jefferson's vision has clearly won the day.

[John] Adams identified himself with the political theories of [James] Harrington, [John] Locke, and [Charles-Louis] Montesquieu, whose ideas of constitutionalism, he believed, were applicable to all peoples everywhere; they were his contribution to what he called "the divine science of politics."

It was [John's Adams] Massachusetts constitution if anything that influenced people.