I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring ... a conspiracy of the few against the equal rights of the many ...Masonry ought forever to be abolished. It is wrong - essentially wrong - a seed of evil, which can never produce any good.
John Quincy AdamsMy stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
John Quincy Adams