Don’t be a slob, become president

John Quincy Adams as a young man

“You come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if your success is mediocre. And if you do not rise to the head not only of your own profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness and obstinacy.“You come into life with advantages which will disgrace you if your success is mediocre. And if you do not rise to the head not only of your own profession, but of your country, it will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness and obstinacy.’’

— Then Vice President (and the next President) John Adams (1735-1826) to his son John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), then a teenager, in 1794. John Quincy Adams managed to become secretary of state, president and congressman, in which job he led the opposition to slavery. Both Adamses are buried at the United First Parish Church, in Quincy, Mass.

‘Facts are stubborn things’

“I will enlarge no more on the evidence, but submit it to you, gentlemen—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: nor is the law less stable than the fact. If an assault was made to endanger their lives, the law is clear, they had right to kill in their own defense.’’

— Founding Father John Adams (1735-1826) was asked to help provide a legal defense for the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, the confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers killed five people in a crowd of 300-400 who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles.

He bravely agreed to defend the soldiers do so despite public anger. Above is his most famous quote from the trial.

'Democracy never lasts long'

Document written by John Adams in 1776 and published anonymously.

John Adams, by Gilbert Stuart.

“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … 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. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”

— John Adams (1735-1826), American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, political philosopher, writer and a U.S. Founding Father who was the second president of the United States (1797-1801) and its first vice president (1789-1797). He was a loyal native of Massachusetts. His remarks were in a letter to a Virginian, John Taylor, in 1814.

John Adams’s birthplace, in Quincy, Mass.

‘Their last asylum’

Bronze and granite monument to Samuel Adams, put up in 1880 in front of Faneuil Hall, in downtown Boston. The hall was the home of the Boston Town Meeting, on Sept. 12 and 13, 1768, an extralegal assembly held in response to the news that British troops would soon be arriving to crack down on anti-British rioting.

— Photo by Anne Whitney 

“Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.”

— Samuel Adams, in “Speech in Philadelphia,’’ on Aug. 1, 1776.

Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the developers of the principles of American republicanism. And he served as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s fourth governor (1794-1797). He was a second cousin to his fellow (and less radical) Founding Father, John Adams, the second U.S. president.

All democracies commit suicide

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

— John Adams (1735-1826), one of the most important American Founding Fathers and the second president

John Adams’s birthplace, at the Adams National Historical Park, in Quincy, Mass.

Massachusetts's three traditional 'social estates'

John Adams, in an 1815 painting by Gilbert Stuart.

[The Massachusetts constitution] was [John Adams’s] attempt to justify that structure by the traditional notion of social estates - that the executive represented the monarchical estate, the senate the aristocratic estate, and the house of representatives the estate of the people.

— Brown University historian Gordon S. Wood