As early as 1776, [John Adams] expressed his doubts about America's capacity for virtue. "I have seen all … - Gordon S. Wood

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There are few instincts more natural than the body in full motion as it races across a field or through the trees.

Gordon S. Wood

As early as 1776, [John Adams] expressed his doubts about America's capacity for virtue. "I have seen all along my Life, Such Selfishness, and Littleness even in New England, that I sometimes tremble to think that, altho We are engaged in the best Cause that ever employed the Human Heart, yet the Prospect of success is doubtfull not for Want of Power or of Wisdom, but of Virtue. "

America, Doubtfull, Heart, Seen, Thinking, Virtue

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The relationship between [John] Adams and [Tomas] Jefferson was extraordinary. They differed on every conceivable issue, except on the Revolution and the love of their country.

Country, Except, Issue, Issues, John, Revolution

History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.

Change, Humanity, Humility, Queens, Things, Time

[The Massachusetts constitution] resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification - practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers.

Drawn, Massachusetts, Practice, Practices, Revolutionary, Special

[Benjamin] Franklin may be a great philosopher, [John Adams] told his diary in 1779, but "as a Legislator in America he has done very little. "

1779, America, Benjamin, Diaries, Done, John

This rationale, which justified the mixed constitution of Great Britain, might have made some sense in 1776, but by 1787 most American thinkers had come to believe that all parts of their balanced governments represented in one way or another the sovereign people. They had left the Aristotelian idea of mixed estates - monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy - way behind. [John] Adams had not, and his stubbornness on this point caused him no end of trouble.

Aristotelian, Believe, Caused, Democracy, Government, Ideas