If the Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, H… - John Adams

If nations should ever be wise, instead of erecting thousands of useless offices, or engaging in unmeaning wars, they will make a fundamental maxim of this, that no human being shall grow up in ignorance. In proportion as this is done, tyranny will disappear, kings and nobles will be made to feel their equitable equality with commoners, and commoners will see their interest and duty to respect the guardians of the laws; for guardians they must have as long as human nature endures.

Eloquence in public assemblies is not the surest road to fame and preferment, at least unless it be used with great caution, very rarely, and with great reserve.

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.