Quotes · Skopia

45 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Quincy✕clear

Essay · Newspaper

A government of laws, and not of men.

1775

★ 7.2

I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all.

1776

★ 7.1

Pamphlet · Political literature

The happiness of society is the end of government.

1776

★ 7.1

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.

1818

★ 7.0

Speech · Courtroom speech

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

1770

★ 5.3

Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power.

1789

★ 5.3

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

1798

★ 5.3

Nature writing · Autobiography and memoir

The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.

1928

★ 5.0

It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth and bitterness of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world.

1978

★ 5.0

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.

1765

★ 3.8

In Politicks the Middle Way is none at all.

1776

★ 3.8

Personal journal

Virtue is not always amiable.

1779

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?

Inaugural Address of John Adams · 1797

★ 3.8

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.

1780

★ 3.7

You and I, ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.

1813

★ 3.7

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.

1814

★ 3.7

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking and writing.

1765

★ 3.6

Dissertation · Newspaper · Political literature

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right... and a desire to know-but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge. I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

1765

★ 3.6

Courtroom speech · Speech

The law, in all vicissitudes of government, fluctuations of the passions, or flights of enthusiasm, will preserve a steady undeviating course; it will not bend to the uncertain wishes, imaginations, and wanton tempers of men... On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.

1770

★ 3.6

Yesterday, the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States."

1776

★ 3.6

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