If the way to do good to my country were to render myself popular, I could easily do it. But extravagant popularity is not the road to public advantage.
John AdamsMankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
John AdamsDid you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?
John AdamsThe United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature. . . . [In] the formation of the American governments . . . it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven. . . . These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
John Adams