Skip to content

While all other Sciences have advanced, that of Government is at a stand; little better understood; little better practiced now than three or four thousand years ago.

Another quote →

Topics

More quotes by John Adams

A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

There is, in the human Breast, a social Affection, which extends to our whole Species.

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.

Letter to Robert J. Evans (1819)

The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.

Discourses on Davila (1790)

Tyranny can scarcely be practised upon a virtuous and wise people.

All John Adams quotes →

You may also like

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

John Updike Buchanan Dying : A Play (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Adams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.