John Adams Quotes

The canton of Uri, the place of the birth and residence of William Tell, shook off the yoke of Austria in 1308, and, with Schwitz and Underwald, laid the foundation of the perpetual alliance of the cantons, in 1315. The canton consists only of villages and little towns or bourgades, and the whole is divided into ten genossamen, or inferior communities. It has no city. Altdorf, where the general assemblies are held, and the Land-Amman and regency reside, is the principal village.

Wherever true toleration, that is to say, the absolute incompetency of government over the conscience of individuals, is established, there an ecclesiastic, when he is admitted into the national assembly, is but a citizen; when he is excluded from it, he becomes again an ecclesiastic.

To expect self-denial from men, when they have a majority in their favor, and consequently power to gratify themselves, is to disbelieve all history and universal experience;

It must be made a sacred maxim, that the militia obey the executive power, which represents the whole people in the execution of laws. To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defence, or by partial orders of towns, counties, or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government.

Here we shall be obliged to consider the reputed opinion of another philosopher, I mean Dr. Franklin. I say reputed, because I am not able to affirm that it is really his. It is, however, so generally understood and reported, both in Europe and America, that his judgment was in opposition to two assemblies, and in favor of a single one, that in a disquisition like this it ought not to be omitted.

He found such a predilection for democracy in the minds of the citizens, that he preserved to every free Athenian his equal vote in the assembly of the people, which he made supreme in all cases, legislative, executive, and judicial. He had not, probably, tried the experiment of a democracy in his own family, before he attempted it in the city, according to the advice of Lycurgus; but was obliged to establish such a government as the people would bear, not that which he thought the best, as he said himself.

But if they divide, each party will, in a course of time, have the whole house, and consequently the whole state, divided into two factions, which will struggle in words, in writing, and at last in arms, until Cesar or Pompey must be emperor, and entail an endless line of tyrants on the nation. But long before this catastrophe, and indeed through every scene of the drama, the laws, instead of being permanent, and affording constant protection to the lives, liberties, and properties of the citizens, will be alternately the sport of contending factions, and the mere vibrations of a pendulum. From the beginning to the end it will be a government of men, now of one set, and then of another; but never a government of laws.

The controversy between M. Turgot and me is, whether a single assembly of representatives be this form? He maintains the affirmative. I am for the negative.

In order to be fully convinced of this, we must take an extensive view of the subject; and the first inquiry should be, what kind of beings men are? You and I admire the fable of Tristram Shandy more than the fable of the Bees, and agree with Butler rather than Hobbes. It is weakness rather than wickedness, which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

The canton of Schwitz has the honor of giving the name to the whole confederation, because the first battle for independency was fought there; yet it consists only of villages divided into six quarters, the first of which is Schwitz, where the ordinary regency of the country resides. The sovereign is the whole country; that is to say, the sovereignty resides in the general assembly of the country, where all the males of sixteen years of age have a right of entry and suffrage.

If ever there was a body of men who merited eternal damnation on earth and in hell, it is this Society of (Ignatius de) Loyola.

The king of Poland is the first magistrate in the republic, and derives all his authority from the nation. He has not the power to make laws, raise taxes, contract alliances, or declare war, nor to coin money, nor even to marry, without the ratification of the diet.

An insatiable desire of riches, and a neglect of other things, through attention to making money, destroys oligarchy; and an insatiable thirst of liberty destroys democracy.

We often hear and read of free states, a free people, a free nation, a free country, a free kingdom, and even of free republics; and we understand, in general, what is intended, although every man may not be qualified to enter into philosophical disquisitions concerning the meaning, or to give a logical definition of the word liberty.

The Sybarites marched an army; but were met by another from Crotona, with Milo, the strong man, at their head, whose reputation prevailed;