Still-Relevant Quotations from John Adams

 

Some still-relevant quotations of John Adams, from the biography by Page Smith (1962):

 

On the existence of evil:

“God did not ‘interpose His power to prevent [evil] because this would destroy that liberty without which there could be no moral good or evil in the universe. Would you have had the universe a mere chemical process, a mere mechanical engine to produce nothing but pleasure?’ Yet at the same time Adams could not entirely resolve ‘the existence of evil with infinite wisdom, goodness, and power.’ It was a problem whose solution must rest, ultimately, with God Himself.” (Page 1077)

 

On the reduction of everything to matter:

“‘Our microscopes, I fear, will never magnify sufficiently.’ The ‘atomical’ theory of matter resolved no difficulties. Granted, ‘atoms are matter, have parts, are divisible, have active power; the question still remains, who and what moves them?’” (page 1077)

 

On the perfectibility of man:

“Did these [Enlightenment] theorists mean that ‘chemical processes may be invented by which the human body may be rendered immortal and incapable of disease upon earth?’…It was no extenuation to say that the Enlightenment philosophers were ‘honest enthusiasts carried away by the popular contagion of the times; for moral and political hysterics are at least as infectious as the smallpox or yellow fever.’ It seemed to Adams ‘humiliating to the pride of human nature that so frivolous a piece of pedantry should have made so much noise in the world and been productive of such melancholy and tragical effects.’

            “The idea that man was perfectible, in short, was ‘mischievous nonsense.’ Man was not perfectible. But this stubborn, immutable fact of human existence should in no way lessen ‘our utmost exertions to amend and improve others and in every way ameliorate the lot of humanity, invent new medicines, construct new machines, write new books, build better houses and ships, institute better governments, discountenance false religions, propagate the only true one, diminish the vices, and increase the virtues of all men and women wherever we can.’” (pages 1077–78)

 

On religion:

“‘Ask me not…whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow disciple with them all.’

            “He wished for a ‘more liberal communication of sentiments’ between all the nations of the world on the subject of religious beliefs. Each nation doubtless had something to contribute, since each might be assumed to have gained at least a partial apprehension of the divine. ‘Translations of the Bible into all languages and sent among all people I hope will produce translations into English and French, Spanish and German and Italian of sacred books of Persians, the Chinese, the Hindoos, etc., etc., etc. Then our grandchildren and my great-grand-children may compare notes and hold fast all that is good.’ His conclusion from his reading was ‘universal toleration. Let the human mind loose. It must be loosed; it will be loose. Superstition and despotism cannot confine it.’” (page 1078)

 

On the Jews:

“‘If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument of civilizing the nations.’ They had preserved and propagated ‘to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent …almighty Sovereign of the Universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality and consequently of all civilization.’” (page 1079)

 

On bitterness and factions in political parties:

“‘In the struggles and competitions of fifty or sixty years, in times that tried men’s hearts and brains and spinal marrow, it could not be otherwise.’

            “One party, representing the more conservative side, would hold power for some twelve years and then there would be ‘an entire change in the administration,’ with the more radical side taking over for a similar period….Our government will be a game of leapfrog of factions, leaping over one another’s back about once in twelve years according to my computation….When a party grows strong and feels its power, it becomes intoxicated, grows presumptuous and extravagant, and breaks to pieces.’” (pages 1079–80)

 

On the possibility of a genuinely free society:

“‘One is always in danger of adopting an opinion that human nature was not made to be free. No nation has long enjoyed that partial and imperfect emancipation that we call a free government. Banks, whiskey, panem and circenses, or some other frivolities, whims, caprices, and above all idolatries and military glories, luxuries, art, sciences, taste, mausoleums, statues, pictures, adulatory histories and panegyrical orations, lies, slanders, calumnies, persecutions, have sooner or later undermined all principles, corrupted all morals, prostituted all religion, and where then is liberty?’ It was only by anticipating the loss of freedom that it could be preserved.”

            “‘There is no special Providence for us…We must and shall go the way of the earth. We ought to contend, to swim through against the wind and tide as long as we can; and the poor, injured, deceived, mocked, and insulted people will struggle till battles and victories and conquests dazzle the majority into adoration of idols. Then come popes and emperors, kingdoms and hierarchies.’” (page 1080)

 

On extremism as the principal threat to free societies:

“…‘the fanaticism of honor; the fanaticism of royalty; the fanaticism of loyalty; the fanaticism of republicanism; the fanaticism of aristocracy; the fanaticism of democracy; the fanaticism of Jacobitism and Jacobinism; the fanaticism of sans-culottism; the fanaticism of Catholicism and Protestantism, of Lutheranism and Calvinism, of Arianism and Socinianism, of common Quakerism and shaking Quakerism, of atheism and Deism, of philosophy and antipathy to learning, of peace societies and missionary societies.’ All man’s civilization was a thin veneer, maintained by law and religion. ‘When men are given up to the rule of their passions, they murder like weasels for the pleasure of murdering, like bulldogs and bloodhounds in a fold of sheep.’” (page 1080)

 

On being invited to join a “peace society”:

“ ‘It is very desirable that all wolves, bears, tigers, panthers, and lions should be tamed, civilized, and humanized,’ but it would not be advisable in the present state of the world ‘to instill in the minds of all mankind conscientious scruples about the lawfulness of defending ourselves against their ferocity by gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder.’ As long as mankind remained aggressive and greedy, it was folly to talk of ‘universal and perpetual peace,’ for such talk, if accepted by the civilized, simply left them at the mercy of their more predatory neighbors, who could not be depended upon to sign the conventions of the peace-lovers or, even if they did sign, to observe them.” (page 1082)

 

On the writing of history:

“ ‘…every history must be founded on some philosophy and some policy.’ If he himself were to write a history he would base it ‘on the morality of the Gospels and leave all other philosophy and policy to shift for itself.’” (page 1082)

 

 

Dire Warning

 

In his five-volume work called The Life of Reason (Volume I: Reason in Common Sense, Chapter 12: Flux and Constancy in Human Nature), philosopher George Santayana wrote,

 

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained…infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

 

            That Santayana is correct is demonstrated by perusal of the daily news in light of the following excerpt from The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (quoted from The Landmark Thucydides, translated by Richard Crawley, revised and edited by Robert B. Strassler [New York: Free Press, 1996], Book 3, Sections 82–84), which describes more or less exactly what we are facing now as a result of the capture of the institutions of our collective memory, that is, our entire education system—public and private colleges and universities, schools of education, public high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, many private and parochial schools, and the several teachers unions—by neo-Marxist revolutionaries during the past five decades.

 

The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes. Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In short, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was lacking was equally commended, until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations sought not the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition to overthrow them; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime. The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only offered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity arose, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won him the prize for superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first. The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention. The leaders in the cities made the fairest professions: on the one side with the cry of political equality of The People, on the other of a moderate aristocracy; but they sought prizes for themselves in those public interests which they pretended to cherish and, stopping at nothing in their struggles for ascendancy, engaged in direct excesses. In their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not limiting them to what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honor with neither party; but the use of fair phrases to arrive at guilty ends was in high reputation. Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape.

           

Thus every form of iniquity took root in the Hellenic countries by reason of the troubles. The ancient simplicity into which honor so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared; and society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow. To put an end to this there was neither promise to be depended upon, nor oath that could command respect; but all parties dwelling rather in their calculation upon the hopelessness of a permanent state of things, were more intent upon self-defense than capable of confidence. In this contest the blunter wits were most successful. Apprehensive of their own deficiencies and of the cleverness of their antagonists, they feared to be worsted in debate and to be surprised by the combinations of their more versatile opponents, and so at once boldly had recourse to action: while their adversaries, arrogantly thinking that they should know in time, and that it was unnecessary to secure by action what policy could provide, often fell victims to their lack of precaution.

           

Meanwhile Corcyra gave the first example of most of the crimes alluded to; of the reprisals exacted by the governed who had never experienced equitable treatment or indeed anything but insolence from their rulers—when their hour came; of the iniquitous resolves of those who desired to get rid of their accustomed poverty and ardently coveted their neighbors’ goods; and lastly, of the savage and pitiless excesses into which men who had begun the struggle not in a class but in a party spirit, were hurried by their ungovernable passions. In the confusion into which life was now thrown in the cities, human nature, always rebelling against the law and now its master, gladly showed itself ungoverned in passion, above respect for justice, and the enemy of all superiority; since revenge would not have been set above religion, and gain above justice, had it not been for the fatal power of envy. Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.

 

 

            Because for fifty years we have failed to remember this past and to teach it to our young, we are now condemned to be repeating it. Unless this revolution is suppressed by the recapture of our educational institutions and the recovery of shared values in our social and political life, we will be drawn into a war that, like the Peloponnesian, all will lose. It ends in tyranny.

Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures

Now published: 

Shakespeare's Rhetorical Figures: An Outline. 

Read more at www.onemindgoodpress.com.

Hamlet

 

At long last my edited and annotated edition of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is available for purchase. I call it a radical restoration of the meaning of the play after two centuries of theatrical misinterpretation and academic misreading.

Read about it at www.OneMindGoodPress.com.

Order it in hardcover or paperback

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Barnes & Noble:

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Note: Amazon is listing the hardcover as “temporarily out of stock,” an annoying error that has not yet been corrected. I've tried. But if you're not a cyborg yourself, you cannot get AI to solve an AI problem. 

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Wishing you a happy, healthy, peaceful new year.