There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
Tag: John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd U.S. President.
How to make the Constitution work again
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Facts are stubborn things
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Your rights
You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.
Corruption is like a cancer
Corruption, like a cancer … eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, floppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole of society.
Educating children
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
The people must be moral
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge … would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.
Liberty vs. security
Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
Public affairs
Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: Perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be …
We must understand our monetary system
All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.