Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 5:50am

Quotes Suitable For Framing: John Adams

John adams

 

 

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.

John Adams (1814)

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Jonathan
Jonathan
Friday, May 13, AD 2016 5:09am

This is long, but very worth it:

The manifest, the avowed difficulty is that democracy, no less than monarchy or aristocracy, sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives, with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain, to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure, by Plebiscite, Referendum, or Caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle, that none shall have power over the people, is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to elude its power. The true democratic principle, that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall never be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle, that every man‘s free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken to mean that the free will of the collective people shall be fettered in nothing. Religious toleration, judicial independence, dread of centralisation, jealousy of State interference, become obstacles to freedom instead of safeguards, when the centralised force of the State is wielded by the hands of the people. Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority above, but absolute, without independence below; to be its own master, not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new one, who may be flattered and deceived, but whom it is impossible to corrupt or to resist, and to whom must be rendered the things that are Caesar’s and also the things that are God’s. The enemy to be overcome is no longer the absolutism of the State, but the liberty of the subject. – Lord Acton

.Anzlyne
.Anzlyne
Friday, May 13, AD 2016 7:57am

There can be real benevolence in different forms of governance- the important thing is right relationship with God

Mary DeVoe
Mary DeVoe
Monday, May 16, AD 2016 8:49am

“And for support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance of the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” from the Unanimous Declaration of Independence for the United States of America ratified and signed by each and every state and from Massachusetts: Samuel Adams and John Adams.

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